Garthanos
Arcadian Knight
oops that was a misquote and I am less certain I totally agree could you fix the attribution
D&D 4E Where was 4e headed before it was canned?
Imaro
Legend
Yep just did, sorry about that still getting the hang of the new boards.
Campbell
Relaxed Intensity
Free form roleplaying has distinguishing characteristics that go beyond a lack of defined mechanisms. Free form role play has no fundamental goal beyond playing out the situation and seeing how things go. It also has no formal means of deciding what happens. Generally you rely on consent and active negotiation in place of formal systems.
Fifth Edition's Goal and Approach is an extremely formal means of resolving what happens to the game state. A player states what they want their character to achieve and how they go about it and then the DM either tells them how it goes or calls for an ability check and then tells them how it goes. It is also fundamentally a game where players are focused on overcoming challenges with strong reward systems to back that up. This is far closer to refereed war gaming like Free Kriegspeil than free form roleplaying. The play is very structured.
Fifth Edition's Goal and Approach is an extremely formal means of resolving what happens to the game state. A player states what they want their character to achieve and how they go about it and then the DM either tells them how it goes or calls for an ability check and then tells them how it goes. It is also fundamentally a game where players are focused on overcoming challenges with strong reward systems to back that up. This is far closer to refereed war gaming like Free Kriegspeil than free form roleplaying. The play is very structured.
Imaro
Legend
Can I ask where you're getting this definition from?
Imaro
Legend
I just asked because after googling it seems like there isn't any definitive agreement on what the exact characteristics of freeform rpg's are... thought admittedly some traits pop up more often than others.
Manbearcat
Legend
I feel like we've done this a million times yet we've made absolutely no headway.
@Parmandur and @Imaro
Imaro was heavily involved in my level 30 DC thread many years back when 5e was first released (which was unfortunately wiped out in the board changeover...it was an extremely productive thread).
Here are the issues at hand that make the comparison of 5e mechanics and fiction at end game incompatible with the experience of 4e mechanics and fiction at end game.
1) 5e uses some kind of extra-PC, objective baseline for the natural language assignment of the difficulty of tasks. Whatever that baseline is, its there, but we can fuss over what it is (which we did in that old thread). Is task x and y Easy/Hard for "average adventurer", "every-man", whom? Someone.
2) A large part of 5e's bounded accuracy is to keep challenges relevant for PCs for longer.
3) 5e's noncombat resolution mechanics produce a fiction whereby there is SIGNIFICANTLY more parity in feats of non-combat martial prowess (coordination/balance/explosiveness/endurance, etc) between "average adventurer" or "every-man" (whatever the baseline) and an endgame Fighter.
So in 5e, you're 4th level Fighter may have + 6 to Athletics. Meanwhile, your 20th level Fighter may have...+11?
4) Even if 5e's GMing ethos pushed back against the intentful design of (2) (it doesn't) and it included 4e's noncombat resolution ethos of "all on-screen obstacles are tier-relevant threats/dangers" (which, for the 4 millionth time, does not mean that the door to the guildmaster's vault in Heroic Tier is suddenly an Epic challenge at Epic Tier if the fiction of the guild hasn't changed), that would still mean that the 5e Fighter at endgame (who is taking on Ancient Red Wyrms in melee combat) isn't overwhelmingly more competent at feats of athletic prowess than the low level Fighter (who is taking on Red Dragon Wyrmlings in melee combat).
Say whatever you'd like about the anti-process-sim gonzo nature of 4e...but as a martial artist and athlete my whole life...that narrative...just does_not_compute. The parity in noncombat capability between the two is far, far, far too narrow.
The guy taking on the Ancient Red Wyrm better be borderline superheroic in their feats of athletic prowess. He almost surely needs to be north (possibly well north) of Captain America and Captain is well north of a 5e endgame Fighter!
Contrast with 4e where:
5) The guy fighting the Red Dragon Wyrmling (RDW) has somewhere around a +13 Athletics...while the guy fighting the Ancient Red Dragon (ARD) has around a +38 Athletics!
One guy is well south of Captain America. One guy is north of Capatain America.
6) Again, the ethos of 4e noncombat resolution is that "obstacles that are on-screen should be tier-relevant threats."
7) So that RDW guy is faced with climbing a steep mountain face with the most precarious of handholds in the cold winter (DC 22). Meanwhile, the ARD Fighter is climbing a sheer volcano, leaping from one impossibly distant handhold to another, while the actual Elder Spirit of the mountain is violently changing the shape of the face to try to shake the Fighter and assaulting him/her with scalding pyroclastic outflow from vents in the rock (DC 42).
The mechanics and ethos of 4e supports that fictional framing and that disparity (which supports the ability to face down an RDW vs an ARD). 5e's mechanics and ethos does not.
Which is fine. It what intentfully designed to produce that...because that is what 5e's vocal audience wanted.
But even if you want to genre drift play to mythic in 5e, the basic PC build tool and action resolution mechanics do not support that parity (the parity of, say, Jamie Lannister vs Beowulf)...having 25 % better chance to succeed at the overwhelming % of tasks just isn't anywhere near the requisite disparity.
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Imaro
Legend
Why would Jamie Lannister be in a mythic campaign? If he were, for some inexplicable reason, wouldn't there just be feats the DM would rule he couldn't accomplish but a mythic character could?
EDIT: And if he's an NPC... well 5e doesn't use the same mechanics for NPC's and PC's.
Manbearcat
Legend
@Imaro
I think you misunderstand my juxtaposition.
I'm comparing the low level Fighter's capability (Jamie Lanister is that 4th level Fighter) vs the endgame Fighter. The PC build and resolution mechanics of 5e contract the noncombat prowess window between those two to an extreme degree.
They wouldn't actually be playing together. We're talking about fictional framing and the game's mathematical archetecture.
I think you misunderstand my juxtaposition.
I'm comparing the low level Fighter's capability (Jamie Lanister is that 4th level Fighter) vs the endgame Fighter. The PC build and resolution mechanics of 5e contract the noncombat prowess window between those two to an extreme degree.
They wouldn't actually be playing together. We're talking about fictional framing and the game's mathematical archetecture.
Imaro
Legend
But if the genre is mythic... Jamie Lannister isn't representative of a low level mythic fighter since he's not a mythic character at all...
In other words you're assuming a specific color on the DC's/mechacnics/etc in 5e that is actually up to the DM to decide.
