D&D General Why is D&D 4E a "tactical" game?

[Oofta]

That's not what I get from reading the MM. It's not a "New and improved Ogre", but an Ogre Veteran or an Ogre Chieftain that becomes the challenge, while you also have a template for Ogre minions rather ones with lots of hitpoints that you saw at lower levels. What's happened is not sliding the difficulty of the monster, but rather that you are moving up the monster food chain to something bigger because you have become that much more powerful.

It's the same concept. You don't encounter ogres at level 10 that would have made you run away at level 1. Even the minions had bumped up attack bonuses and damage even if they did die with 1 hit for convenience.

I still occasionally do the "powered up" ogre thing and always have. But if I do, it's not the same ogre, it's the new-and-improved ogre.

 

[Hexmage-EN]

I guess I can get that, but at the same time I think it's an effective way to actually make it so you don't get overly bogged down by lower level enemies and can feel like high-powered heroes. A style choice, but it's one I can get behind.

I'm assuming 5E's bounded accuracy was inspired by trying to accomodate waves of lower-level enemies in a different way that felt more verismilitudinous than 4E's minions. In practice, though, I find myself using lower HP totals for low level creatures fighting high level PCs in 5E anyway.

For example, the 5E ghoul's hitpoints are given as 22 (5d8). While I'll use 22 HP for ghouls fighting lower-level PCs, the ghouls fighting higher level PCs will probably just have 10 HP. That's because their narrative purpose has shifted from "being a scary challenge to the PCs" to "being the minions of a stronger undead creature or necromancer's army".

 

[Justice and Rule]

It's the same concept. You don't encounter ogres at level 10 that would have made you run away at level 1. Even the minions had bumped up attack bonuses and damage even if they did die with 1 hit for convenience.

I still occasionally do the "powered up" ogre thing and always have. But if I do, it's not the same ogre, it's the new-and-improved ogre.

My point is that there's less a "new-and-improved" ogre but just different ogres at different levels. The old ones become minions and the new ones are the guys who bossed the old ones around. It's not sliding difficulty as much as progression in the world.

I'm assuming 5E's bounded accuracy was inspired by trying to accomodate waves of lower-level enemies in a different way that felt more verismilitudinous than 4E's minions. In practice, though, I find myself just having weaker mooks in 5E die if they take more than 10 or so damage anyway.

Bounded accuracy is a double-edged sword: it can be cool to have threatening low-level enemies just through hordes, but part of the problem is that for certain classes your damage doesn't quite scale in the same way. For martials, you just start doing more attacks rather than having your individual attacks starting to do more damage.

With 4E, it was to just say "No, these dudes are minions now. At this point you're good enough that you can just lop the dude's head off with a single swing." With PF2, characters are able to add damage dice to their weapons over time or (if you play the best way) your characters just get extra damage dice so that any weapon they pick up becomes incredibly deadly and they can blaze through minions insanely fast through damage output alone.

 

[Micah Sweet]

I'm assuming 5E's bounded accuracy was inspired by trying to accomodate waves of lower-level enemies in a different way that felt more verismilitudinous than 4E's minions. In practice, though, I find myself using lower HP totals for low level creatures fighting high level PCs in 5E anyway.

For example, the 5E ghoul's hitpoints are given as 22 (5d8). While I'll use 22 HP for ghouls fighting lower-level PCs, the ghouls fighting higher level PCs will probably just have 10 HP.

Well, if you liked the 4e system, making that change in 5e makes sense, as its closer to what you're familiar with. For me, the 5e way doesnt snap my reality suspenders the way 4e tended to.

 

[Oofta]

My point is that there's less a "new-and-improved" ogre but just different ogres at different levels. The old ones become minions and the new ones are the guys who bossed the old ones around. It's not sliding difficulty as much as progression in the world.



Bounded accuracy is a double-edged sword: it can be cool to have threatening low-level enemies just through hordes, but part of the problem is that for certain classes your damage doesn't quite scale in the same way. For martials, you just start doing more attacks rather than having your individual attacks starting to do more damage.

With 4E, it was to just say "No, these dudes are minions now. At this point you're good enough that you can just lop the dude's head off with a single swing." With PF2, characters are able to add damage dice to their weapons over time or (if you play the best way) your characters just get extra damage dice so that any weapon they pick up becomes incredibly deadly and they can blaze through minions insanely fast through damage output alone.

Different games implement things in different fashion. Multiple attacks versus more damage is just different ways of resolving the same issue: higher level PCs should be more effective.

It's just a preference. Rogues in 5E just up their damage, personally I like fighters having a slightly different feel. But there is no perfect solution to making higher levels meaningful.

 

[Garthanos]

Well, 4E was more constrained and prescriptive of power levels. The assumption that you would have a +X weapon at level N and so on. What I was talking about is that in 5E I can set up a cliff that the group encounters at level 1 that they have no chance of climbing and must find a way around. At higher levels they can climb the cliff with little difficulty. At level 1 that ogre is a major threat at level 10 a single ogre would be a speed bump. But a dozen ogres facing that level 10 party? Now you have a fight on your hands*.

In 4E that ogre is still going to be a threat but at level 10 it's going to be the new and improved ogre because a dozen ogres wouldn't stand a chance.
Throwing relatively low level monsters against a group at higher level can give them more of a sense of accomplishment, a "Remember back when 1 of those would have been tough? We just took out a dozen!"

it might be 10 minion class ogres or a swarm of ogres in 4e, a simplification so that un-needed mechanics were not included.

Still taking out a dozen ogres still the same kind of ogres just represented in a simpler way

 

[bert1001 fka bert1000]

Yeah, that was another thing that bothered us. We liked the objectivity (shared by every other edition) that meant any given creature was represented mechanically the same way, no matter when you met them. That statblocks were based as much on who was facing them as much as by who they were really rubbed us the wrong way.

Yeah it's very different. This is a key part of embracing the paradigmn shift. In 4e there are no "objective" stat blocks. Don't try to use them that way.

The primary purpose of the stat blocks is to model how a challenge would play out against a particular Level X party.

So, the same group of Ogres going from Elite monsters at Level 1 to Standard monsters at Level 5 to minions at Level 10 is just the mechanical contruct to get the desired fiction across. For level 10 PCs, Ogres are a little bit of a threat in numbers or when lead by a more powerful foe but can be dispatched with like red shirts.

The exact same Ogre would never be represented by a standard Level 1 monster at Level 1 and then a Level 10 monster at level 10 just because you ran into it again at Level 10. The mechanical choices are tools to help maintain the fiction not destroy it.

 

[Oofta]

it might be 10 minion class ogres or a swarm of ogres in 4e, a simplification so that un-needed mechanics were not included.

Still taking out a dozen ogres still the same kind of ogres just represented in a simpler way

They're completely different monsters though in 4E. My preference is the same monster, same cliff, same obstacle, growth represented by ease of overcoming the challenge.

To me 4E at times felt like a treadmill with different paint job on my powers. There were aspects of 4E I liked, others I did not. This falls into the did not category.

But this horse is dead. There's nothing wrong with either way of doing things, I just have a preference.

 

[bert1001 fka bert1000]

Try looking at it this way:

Player 1 (level 30): "How difficult is it to climb this ladder?"

DM: "It's hard. The DC will be 30."

Player 2 (level 1): "Can I climb it?"

DM: "Sure, but it's still hard. The DC is 15 for you."

Numbers are not meant to be static in 4e. That is why scaling was designed to be easy, and player facing. The game assumes you're not going to have a group of character with more than a few levels apart.

That's not how it works. Or if it is how it was suppose to work (it wasn't), don't do it that way! Please use this hammer by holding the wooden shaft instead of the metal head...

4e has the assumption that as you progress in level you will be seeking out and encountering "level appropriate" challenges and that you will only use the mechanical resolution system when those challenges are appropriate (maybe -/+4 levels). "Level appropriate" scales with the fiction which in most D&D worlds would not have EPIC ladders.

That said, it still works ok if you use it outside this range for a hypothetical mixed party.

If this ladder is a fictionally hard Level 30 challenge (is it infused with antimatter?), then set a hard Level 30 DC. The Level 1 PC still has to hit the Level 30 DC to climb it.

Again, even if you think this morphing ladders was the intension of the designers, why cling to something that produces nonsense when we have a way to look at it that avoids this!

 

[Garthanos]

They're completely different monsters though 8n 4E.

they are unable to do their awesome tricks that throw the heroes around does not make them completely different monsters, real beings adapt how they fight and act to what they are facing. 4e monsters have more tactically interesting abilities as opposed to bags of hit points.

My preference is the same monster,

In 4e we have both of course.
It may be the same monster but now desperate and for all intents and purpose unable to use its better gambits against the superior pcs and significantly less able to defend itself against theirs.

The cliff if presented "as a challenge" is supposed to be a truly different one like the monster who is the Chieftain ogre.