D&D 4E What can Next do to pull in 4e campaigns?

[Jester David]

There's always a narrative reason! The players in my game expect monsters, and NPC wizards, to be able to do weird stuff they haven't encountered before, and I've never found it disrupting. Dare I say that's part of what makes it magic?

"Because the players expect it" is not a narrative reason. I mean a story reason, an in world reason this spellcaster has access to unique magic or unlearnable secrets.

One of the tropes of the game is scribing scrolls and copying spellbooks. If fighting a wizard NPC, a wizard PC will be excited at the idea of access to a new spellbook. Unique spells throw a monkey wrench in that convention and player expectations. It's okay sometimes, but not every single time.

Really, there's also only so many magical effects we need. We don't need a dozen >slightly< different area effect attacks that deal fire damage. If a monster is using fireball just say fireball. We all know what a fireball looks like and acts like so it's easier to describe and visualize at the table. There's a shared narrative. There's already hundreds of spells with a history in the game; each of the 300+ monsters in a single Monster Manual do not need 2-3 unique snowflake powers. (Plus, when making a monster, you shouldn't have to look through 600-900 powers to see if there's a monster that does the same thing only better/worse.)

Likewise, there's the fighter. If the skilled level 5 fighter, the master of the longsword, so special they're an adventurer. There shouldn't be many ways to swing a sword they cannot learn.

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Little tangent here.
I’ve been re-reading some forum posts I made in the lead-up and release of 4e. My philosophy has really changed in the intervening years. I was really gung-ho for a lot of the 4e changes. It’s really weird; it’s like reading posts by people I’ve spent the last two years arguing against. I do recall my opinions were more middle-ground but I focused on the opposite position to be the Devil’s Advocate in a strongly 4e-wary community. And I was coming off a long stint playing Living Greyhawk, which really skewed my perceptions of 3e.

Back in 2007-8 I was a huge proponent of the idea that monsters were just meant to show up, doing their cool thing, and die within 2-4 rounds. And that anything in their statblock above and beyond that was wasted; that everything in the statblock should pertain to combat. Basically, the 4e monster design.

Since then, my opinions have really changed. Reversed really. I did the 4e thing for a time and found the combat-only monster entries problematic. I missed the lore, the story ideas, and monsters having a place in the world. I missed monsters that had powers useful for things other than combat, who had powers that could justify plots and serve as adventure hooks. Monsters who could do things outside of combat that didn’t amount of DM fiat or only having phenomenal cosmic power when off camera.

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I think there's room for a middle ground. Because, like most problems, the answer is not an either/or. The best compromise would be the highest level or most thematic/combat useful spells/powers have a full description. Other spells are just listed, so the DM can treat them as rituals (usable outside of combat) or, if they're feeling adventurous, skim through the books.

 

[Quickleaf]

[MENTION=37579]Jester Canuck[/MENTION]
I really appreciate the thoughtfulness of your post I enjoy DMing 4e most, but I have noticed the same thing about monsters being divorced from noncombat abilities. At least compared to 2e which, albeit individual monsters were hit or miss, I feel had much greater lore. The ultimate question for me is: How usable is this?

I don't mean for my campaign. I mean, how readily usable is this information? How readily does it leap of the page and say "here is how you can use me in with your players now"? How much time do I need to spend in prep in order to just use it? How much time do I have to spend comprehending a power or looking up a spell or tracking an effect?

For example, while monster prose can be evocative and help to activate the imagination in a unique way, a time-harried DM who flips open the Monster Manual would be better served by a bulletpoint format of ways to use the monster in an encounter. Another example, including monster material components I the monster's description.

When it comes to "a fireball is a fireball is a fireball", I tend to err on the side of assuming the the DM doesn't know how a fireball works mechanically even if they get it narratively. For example, if you threw me in any edition of D&D and asked me to quote what a fireball spell does exactly from memory I couldn't do it; I'd get close...a 20' burst which does 6d6 fire damage and half if they make their save I'd need to reference the book for specifics.

 

[Incenjucar]

"Because the players expect it" is not a narrative reason. I mean a story reason, an in world reason this spellcaster has access to unique magic or unlearnable secrets.

The narration exists to serve the "be engaged" goal which is generally aimed toward fun. Surprises are a powerful tool to engage an audience. Nobody expected my chest-bursting nightmare butterflies but they sure as heck were engaged when I followed "Don't forget to roll your saving throw" and murmured off-hand "And don't fail."

One of the tropes of the game is scribing scrolls and copying spellbooks. If fighting a wizard NPC, a wizard PC will be excited at the idea of access to a new spellbook. Unique spells throw a monkey wrench in that convention and player expectations. It's okay sometimes, but not every single time.

That is a trope, yes, but you don't need to drown PCs in spellbook-using wizards anymore.

Really, there's also only so many magical effects we need. We don't need a dozen >slightly< different area effect attacks that deal fire damage. If a monster is using fireball just say fireball. We all know what a fireball looks like and acts like so it's easier to describe and visualize at the table. There's a shared narrative. There's already hundreds of spells with a history in the game; each of the 300+ monsters in a single Monster Manual do not need 2-3 unique snowflake powers. (Plus, when making a monster, you shouldn't have to look through 600-900 powers to see if there's a monster that does the same thing only better/worse.)

By "Fireball" you mean "Ranged burst dealing fire damage" right? Why would you ever need to give a monster a "Fireball?" when you could just give them a ranged AOE that deals fire damage and call it a whatever of fire?

Likewise, there's the fighter. If the skilled level 5 fighter, the master of the longsword, so special they're an adventurer. There shouldn't be many ways to swing a sword they cannot learn.

I see this as going in the wrong direction. Instead of limiting monsters to PC abilities, why not expand PC options to include classically-monstrous techniques? Perhaps ensure that monsters remain the masters of their individual tricks, but let their be a bit of trickle-down from them so that the game becomes bigger instead of smaller, given how incredibly specific and inflexible D&D abilities have been historically?

 

[Obryn]

By "Fireball" you mean "Ranged burst dealing fire damage" right? Why would you ever need to give a monster a "Fireball?" when you could just give them a ranged AOE that deals fire damage and call it a whatever of fire?

I just wanted to Q this FT.

Put it in functional, precise terms. You don't need to refer to the base spell anymore; it's all right there in the block.

 

[Jester David]

The narration exists to serve the "be engaged" goal which is generally aimed toward fun. Surprises are a powerful tool to engage an audience. Nobody expected my chest-bursting nightmare butterflies but they sure as heck were engaged when I followed "Don't forget to roll your saving throw" and murmured off-hand "And don't fail."

Engagement is... subjective? Relative? Too late in the day for me, can't find th right word.
Anyhoo, you can be engaged by many different things: the narrative, the plot, a visual, the mechanics, an encounter, the minis, a nice prop. You can be engaged by any type of game, mini or board or tabletop RPG. As terms go it's as vague and unhelpful as "fun".
But the narrative, the overlapping combination of fluff meeting crunch is unique to tabletop role playing games, and is important. If the story and flavour stop interacting with the crunch, if what is happening at the table is too divorced from what is happening in the mind's eye, the game has problems. If the rules of the game do not mesh with the rule of th game's worlds there's a disparity that hurts suspension of disbelief,

That is a trope, yes, but you don't need to drown PCs in spellbook-using wizards anymore.

There are alternatives: warlocks, sorcerers, psions, etc. But wizards should act like wizards.
There's some flexibility, as a DM should be able to redefine wizards for their campaign setting, but that shouldn't also invoke redefining every spellcasting monster individually.

By "Fireball" you mean "Ranged burst dealing fire damage" right? Why would you ever need to give a monster a "Fireball?" when you could just give them a ranged AOE that deals fire damage and call it a whatever of fire?

Well, if we're going to do that, why not just ranged AoE attack flavored as fire damage. We could have four spells in the entire game. But that's bland.

Similarly, monster powers can't have a lot or flavour. Space is tight. There's a lot of 4e monsters whose powers just aren't well described by the name in the statblock. A couple times I've pulled monsters out of the Monster Builder and done a double take at their powers.
Which is a big advantage for using player powers. There's extra space for description. So the monster has all the familiar flavour with none of the needed space.

I see this as going in the wrong direction. Instead of limiting monsters to PC abilities, why not expand PC options to include classically-monstrous techniques? Perhaps ensure that monsters remain the masters of their individual tricks, but let their be a bit of trickle-down from them so that the game becomes bigger instead of smaller, given how incredibly specific and inflexible D&D abilities have been historically?

Monsters should of course have unique abilities, so long as they're actually unique. The bugbear has an ability that could very well just be Sneak Attack, and the death knight has a renamed fireball.

 

[Obryn]

There are alternatives: warlocks, sorcerers, psions, etc. But wizards should act like wizards.
There's some flexibility, as a DM should be able to redefine wizards for their campaign setting, but that shouldn't also invoke redefining every spellcasting monster individually.

Well, if we're going to do that, why not just ranged AoE attack flavored as fire damage. We could have four spells in the entire game. But that's bland.

Similarly, monster powers can't have a lot or flavour. Space is tight. There's a lot of 4e monsters whose powers just aren't well described by the name in the statblock. A couple times I've pulled monsters out of the Monster Builder and done a double take at their powers.
Which is a big advantage for using player powers. There's extra space for description. So the monster has all the familiar flavour with none of the needed space.

Monsters should of course have unique abilities, so long as they're actually unique. The bugbear has an ability that could very well just be Sneak Attack, and the death knight has a renamed fireball.

You're missing what's in my mind the critical point - DM prep time and overhead.

When you boil all effects down, as in your last paragraph, to PC rules, you're putting an added research burden on the DM for game prep. If I need a 10' burst of lightning, I should be able to just put that in there instead of looking up what spell (if any) fits those characteristics. If my bugbear can do extra damage when backstabbing, I should be able to do that instead of worry about rogue levels. If I want a ray that weakens, why should I need to know anything about ray of enfeeblement or any of its relatives?

This sort of setup has a cost in DM overhead I'm not willing to pay right now. (Especially since I think it's a worse way of doing things in the first place.)

 

[pemerton]

"Because the players expect it" is not a narrative reason. I mean a story reason

I know. I gave a story reason - "it's magic". Hence my players have the expectations that they do: they expect that crazy wizards, demon cultists, servants of Torog, etc will have abilities to bring to bear that the PCs have not themselves mastered, and probably never will.

One of the tropes of the game is scribing scrolls and copying spellbooks. If fighting a wizard NPC, a wizard PC will be excited at the idea of access to a new spellbook.

This is one trope, yes. Another is that spells are granted by horrors that the mind of man was not meant to know! My game leans somewhat more in that direction (especially because, in 4e, there is in fact no such thing as copying an attack spell from a spellbook).

I missed the lore, the story ideas, and monsters having a place in the world.

Some selections from the 4e MM, starting at the start but then cutting to Mearls' favourite:

Aboleths are hulking amphibious creatures that hail from the Far Realm, a distant and unfathomable plane. They live in the Underdark, swimming through drowned crannies or creeping through lightless tunnels and leaving trails of slimy mucus in their wake. Malevolent and vile, aboleths bend humanoid creatures to their will, and more powerful aboleths can transform their minions into slimy horrors. . . Sometimes aboleths live together as a brood or even in a collection of broods. . .

Abominations are living weapons that were created during the ancient cosmic war between the gods and the primordials. Some of these creations were enormous, others small. Some were singular beings of terrific power, while others were legion. A few abominations stand apart as failed or incomplete divine experiments that have either been locked away or forgotten. . .

Angels exist as expressions of the Astral Sea, sentient energy in humanoid form. They most often serve the gods, so some believe that the gods created them. In reality, angels are powerful astral beings who appeared during the first moments of the creation of the Astral Sea. Different types of angels have different callings; they are literally manifestations of celestial vocations. Perhaps it was the needs of the gods that caused the astral stuff to spew them forth, but it was not a conscious act of creation. During the great war between the gods and the primordials, angels offered themselves as warriors to the gods that best encompassed their calling . . .

*************

Hook horrors drag victims to their deaths using their powerful hooked arms. These pack omnivores scour the Underdark in search of live prey, foraging when necessary.

Hook horrors communicate with one another using a complex series of clicking noises they make with their mouths and carapace. The eerie clicks echo in the Underdark, warning prey that death is near. . .

Hook horrors are so good at climbing and jumping that they often attack from an unexpected direction. . .

A hook horror sometimes flings a tasty victim at the feet of its packmates . . .

Hook horrors live in total darkness. They can see in lit environments, but in the dark of the deep earth they navigate using echolocation. They also make clicking noises to communicate with one another. An Underdark explorer might become aware of nearby hook horrors by these noises. . .

Although they hunt in small packs, hook horrors also gather in larger groups called clans. A particular clan, ruled by its strongest egg-laying female, ranges over a wide area in the Underdark. Its members defend clan territory fiercely from any intruder, including unrelated hook horrors. . .

Hook horrors are omnivorous but prefer meat to plants. Rumor has it that they prefer the flesh of drow over any other. Not surprisingly, drow slay wild hook horrors and take young and eggs to raise as slaves.​

Obviously what counts as a "story idea" is to a significant extent in the eye of the beholder. But these monsters seem to me all to have pretty clear and strong places in the world, with associated lore. I don't see the oft-mooted contrast with earlier MMs.

 

[pemerton]

the narrative, the overlapping combination of fluff meeting crunch is unique to tabletop role playing games, and is important. If the story and flavour stop interacting with the crunch, if what is happening at the table is too divorced from what is happening in the mind's eye, the game has problems.

<snip>

A couple times I've pulled monsters out of the Monster Builder and done a double take at their powers.
Which is a big advantage for using player powers.

I think some monsters have challenging powers - some MM3 ones especially (eg Chained Cambion, Pact Hag). But some of these abilities are also very worthwhile - the Chained Cambion played incredibly well when I used it, and it power (of psychically chaining two PCs together, therefore causing them to vicariously experience it's own suffering) was awesome. But these are precisely the sorts of abilities that you lose if you confine yourself to PHB abilities.

Another example from my latest session is the Flayed Wrackspawn's "broken loyalties" power. That's a nice integration of story elements and mechanics that you won't get if you stick to PHB material.

Whereas the stock-standard PHB stuff (force missiles, fireballs, hold person etc) should be trivially replicable in a stat block, as [MENTION=11821]Obryn[/MENTION] and [MENTION=6182]Incenjucar[/MENTION] have indicated, without needing cross referencing at all.

 

[Sadras]

I've taken to calling what I like best about D&D Next its "Hat Trick", three design philosophies that inject a breath of fresh air into the tabletop experience. Things I have missed sorely for 2 editions. Those things are:

1. Speed of Play
2. Bounded Accuracy
3. Theater of the Mind.

Personally I also find it easier for our group to implement a house rule which would be my no.4

And just to mention, Speed of Play above includes running faster combat grid scenarios, due to fewer reactions available and no meta 4e power-discussion on PC tactics.

The one thing we have to keep in mind is that this is just the playtest - it's lean, its doesn't have the bloat of the previous editions. One has to consider how much to limit the influx of supplementary information and modular rules in ones games to ensure Speed of Play remains.

 

[Incenjucar]

Engagement is... subjective? Relative? Too late in the day for me, can't find th right word.

Engagement is neither of those things, but who is engaged by what varies by individual and context. But certain things have a long history of being engaging for a large portion of the species (and, indeed, animals too). Surprises and mysteries are universally appealing, albeit in different doses and contents for different people.

Anyhoo, you can be engaged by many different things: the narrative, the plot, a visual, the mechanics, an encounter, the minis, a nice prop. You can be engaged by any type of game, mini or board or tabletop RPG. As terms go it's as vague and unhelpful as "fun".

It can actually be observed and measured, so I don't see why that's so. It's true that people respond differently, so there's no one right way just as there is no badwrongfun.

But the narrative, the overlapping combination of fluff meeting crunch is unique to tabletop role playing games, and is important. If the story and flavour stop interacting with the crunch, if what is happening at the table is too divorced from what is happening in the mind's eye, the game has problems. If the rules of the game do not mesh with the rule of th game's worlds there's a disparity that hurts suspension of disbelief,

The fluff and crunch were never very firmly attached, and "I have a Fireball spell" is not significantly different from "I have a spell that creates a ball of fire" except for nostalgia, which irritates as many as it endears. Having most of the old tricks of the old days is fine, and having spells that create those effects is fine, but making spells the source of effects rather than universal descriptions which are produced by those spells just makes things clumsy and unwieldy.

There are alternatives: warlocks, sorcerers, psions, etc. But wizards should act like wizards.
There's some flexibility, as a DM should be able to redefine wizards for their campaign setting, but that shouldn't also invoke redefining every spellcasting monster individually.

I don't think that every magic-using monster needs to be a spellcaster. A demon summoning up a ball of fire shouldn't be casting Fireball unless they are ALSO a wizard or whatever. A demon summoning a ball of fire should be summoning a ball of fire in a way that a demon would. It's like if every punch to the face has to be using a monk ability. And, frankly, the lore of the game doesn't explain it all. People are used to it, but it doesn't make any freaking sense with the actual story material in the game. I can't speak much on earlier versions of the games, but 2E and 3E did not have an explanation for why monsters were born with powers that happened to exactly replicate spells. Now if D&D wizards were said to be running around ripping off natural magic instead of inventing their own, that would be one thing, but that's not part of the core lore.

Well, if we're going to do that, why not just ranged AoE attack flavored as fire damage. We could have four spells in the entire game. But that's bland.

You're better than hyperbole. I'm 100% for the idea of different damage types having their own explicit effects, but even without those "Fire" still means something to the trolls. Moreover, damage spells usually have a rider effect or other special trait that makes them unique beyond the damage. There's nothing special about Fireball that makes it more interesting than a 2d6 30' sphere or a 10d8 10' sphere. Throwing bat poop just isn't that interesting.

Similarly, monster powers can't have a lot or flavour. Space is tight. There's a lot of 4e monsters whose powers just aren't well described by the name in the statblock. A couple times I've pulled monsters out of the Monster Builder and done a double take at their powers.
Which is a big advantage for using player powers. There's extra space for description. So the monster has all the familiar flavour with none of the needed space.


Monsters should of course have unique abilities, so long as they're actually unique. The bugbear has an ability that could very well just be Sneak Attack, and the death knight has a renamed fireball.

While it's true that WotC's skill with words is often dubious, you can fit an interesting power into a short space if you have a decent enough codified and consistent system and people don't try to explain what fire does in the ability itself.

Now, it's true that someone may want to make a monster with a couple dozen old school two-page-long spells, but as it happens, 4E actually gave you advice (like, several pages) on giving monsters PC powers, so that's never gone away if you really want to do it that way specifically when it's the only good way.