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

[Neonchameleon]

Bill do you have the same kind of issue with Sneak Attack working on Undead and Oozes and Constructs and such?

I used to, and gradually got accustomed to it.

For the record I always had issues with Sneak Attack not working on undead and constructs. Precision damage doesn't affect clockwork? Seriously? And vampires have no hearts and you can't knock zombies heads off?

If it has a discernable anatomy some parts are going to be weaker and more vulnerable than others and thus precision damage should apply. As for oozes it depends exactly how they work.

 

[Campbell]

I think I would appreciate at least a shout out for how well Pathfinder Second Edition manages to handle things like precision damage, resource management for martial characters, long term impacts from poisons, diseases, curses, and spells, et al while still having dynamic tactical combat, strong math, and martial characters who can do amazing things and take as much skill to play well as casters. It feels like there's no real appreciation how Pathfinder Second Edition walks that line despite the professed criticisms that apply just as strongly to 5e as they do to 4e. It's hard for me to not see that lack of consistency in a pretty negative light.

 

[Dannyalcatraz]

I'm just not sure how or why the still-simmering anti-4e edition warriors decided to turn this thread from one about the tactics of 4e and possibly what can be learned into yet another whingefest about what didn't work for them

Mod Note:

Expressing opinions is fine. Sniping little codas like this are NOT helping.

 

[Dannyalcatraz]

In some cases, it's because pro-4e edition warriors keep trotting out misconceptions and overgeneralizations about 4e's critics. And so it goes on and on...

Sound familiar?

(It didn’t end well for either one.)

 

[AbdulAlhazred]

I've never played D&D 4E, I quit D&D when it was released, but I have noticed it is frequently referred to as a "tactical" game, more so than other versions of D&D. Why is that? 3.x was a very tactical game, combat was pretty much designed to take place on a battle map with minis. Is something else meant by 4e being tactical or were a battle map and minis even more of a requirement?

Well, I expect this was covered fairly well in 9 pages, but you never know....

4e did a few things. First of all it restructured the rules in such a way that COMBAT WORKS. That is, it is a fairly codified and process-driven rules structure. One of the implications of this is that both the players and the GM can look at the situation and decide what it means and what they are going to do about it. This makes 4e inherently amenable to genuine tactical analysis, and thus you can select character options in such a way as to make various tactics work for you, or to thwart certain types of options your opponents might try. This also couples with the combat roles, which provide a ready-made structuring of tactical situations on both the party and the monster side. The strict codification of the grid, action economy, etc. furthers that.

Now, 3.x has SOME of this, but there are simply too many flaws in the way things play out, and too much ambiguity that falls to the GM to arbitrate in every element of combat such that there are really on a very few optimum ways to play, and they tend to work regardless of what the opposition is, for the most part.

As for more of a requirement, yes, 4e MUST be played on the 'grid' (OK, you can slide past this in some simpler cases if you really want to). Many of the character's abilities are couched in terms of things like pushing an opponent 2 squares, and things like that. All ranges, distances, areas of effect, etc. are defined in grid terms precisely. Beyond that it is just IMPORTANT. A fighter can use specific class features against opponents within his reach when they move or attack. This is the heart of what the class does, not just one piece. Likewise flanking opponents and getting CA on them is a pretty important consideration, and it is defined in terms of the grid. This is, again, BECAUSE of the desire to make things transparent to the players. It should never arise that there's a doubt about who is where that has to be resolved by the GM, or about exactly where an AoE falls on the map. These are all things that can be unclear in other editions.

Some people seem to have found this preciseness inhibiting. Others objected to the way it puts the players on nearly an equal footing with the GM in being able to say what is what. I assume other people just didn't enjoy that aesthetic.

 

[AbdulAlhazred]

Bill do you have the same kind of issue with Sneak Attack working on Undead and Oozes and Constructs and such?

I used to, and gradually got accustomed to it.

I always felt like we know SO LITTLE in detail about things like the physiology and particularly magical natures of these various creatures that decreeing there have to be only certain 'right' ways for things like Sneak Attack to work seems odd. The way 4e handles it IS gamist, and unabashedly so, but I'm hard-pressed to see how it would be impossible to make especially effective attacks against almost anything. Even 4e still allows for things like immunity or resistance tied to specific keywords anyway, so it isn't like the capability to do similar stuff doesn't exist. It is just more under GM control (and in general when 4e gives some of what might be GM authority to the players, it also gives a lot of authority over stuff like this to the GM instead of investing it in the game developers).

 

[GreyLord]

Good for you. It's still strange to me that you can call it 4e and prefer it to another edition when throwing out at least 50% of the rules and design, but if you are happy doing it. As for me, it would be way more work doing this than any other edition, so call me lazy...

If they play it like a boardgame, then why not, it's still a way to play the game, they are still missing power cards though.

You should really read them, you know.

Again, please read the rules of 5e. Non-combat challenges, Milestone advancement or even levelling without XPs are not even options, they are core rules.

No, it's not, sorry, please read the rules.

Good for you, I can play 5e without any experience at all, just out of the box.

And we are speaking here about the core game design. If people are happy running a game completely against the core design, good for them, they are (probably rare) counter examples.

You can apply everything to anything (and the other way around), but if you look at answers from other 4e proponents, they usually like the rules because it allows the PCs to decide what they can do and avoid litigating with the DM...

I DM 5e, thank you very much. I also have read the rules...thank you very much. Yes, I know what I'm talking about regarding 5e.

(Edit: an edit to this post as I have read the rest of the thread this comment no longer seems applicable).

[Edit] From everything you've said, it appears that you play fast and loose with the rules (which is okay, and it is okay to play any version fast and loose. WE should accept that there are those that play strictly by the rules, and those that play fast and loose by the rules. Both methods are okay for playing RPGs (we should be able to play the game in the manner which we enjoy), but we shouldn't accost others for the way they play and call it the wrong way to play.

Most of the items in 5e got their origins in 4e, but they painted them over with gloss so to bring back the players of 3e. 5e has a page or two on other ways to get XP, for 4e it was the BASE assumption. XP did NOT come from Monsters, but from encounters. Monsters were just one type of those challenges, but there were far more than that. Situational, Persuasive, NPC's, challenges, traps, etc.

It was rated on a level system (that many people disliked, but it is what it is) which gave XP depending on the Challenge of the Encounter. All that determined whether something was an encounter was whether there was a risk of failure. If there was no risk, there wasn't an Encounter that could give XP. If there WAS risk (let's say, trying to trick a Noble into letting you go through their lands) of failure, it could count as an encounter.

I could go into great detail on how 5e took many of the items of 4e directly into it's core (for example, proficiency bonus is directly from 4e's proficiency system, but spread over 20 levels instead of giving the +5 bonus right off the bat, and using the proficiency bonus for combat as well), but that would take someone with an open mind on how the various editions of D&D got their basic core (in general) from the edition right before it (the same actually applies to 4e from 3. too, the basic core of 4e is pure D20 and easily converted from 3.5 if one wanted because they are similar).

(Edit: an edit to this post as I have read the rest of the thread this comment no longer seems applicable).
Much of what has been said about 4e can be said about 5e and be correct. (Edit: an edit to this post as I have read the rest of the thread this comment no longer seems applicable).

PS: It may interest people that...yes, they actually sold "power" cards for 5e when it first came out years ago.

Not sure how many are still being sold, but I think at least the spell cards are still sold. These can be used (if I recall) currently with the Fighter, Paladin, Cleric, Druid, Warlock, Wizard, Rogue, Bard, and Ranger classes. So, these days you are out of luck if you play a Barbarian or Monk, but otherwise, you can get Spell (some could even call those "Power") cards for your class of choice if you so desire.

 

[Staffan]

There's a strong tendency for early adventures in new editions of D&D and offshoots to range from problematic to outright bad. You saw some of that with D&D3e, and there's some notorious cases with the early APs for PF2e, too. My hypothesis is that the adventure writers--even if they include people who helped design the new edition--have not entirely internalized how the new edition they're writing for works, and I also suspect those early adventures are also rushed.

It's a similar thing to the monster book paradox.

Pretty much every edition has had a Monster Manual (or Bestiary for Pathfinder) released as part of the core rules. This usually contains a selection of the most commonly used and iconic monsters: orcs, goblins, trolls, giants, dragons, mind flayers, a bunch of fiends, and so on. But since they're designed concurrently with the core rules, those designing the monsters often don't really know what makes a monster good. What are the right stats for a particular thing? What sort of abilities work well together? What makes this monster interesting to fight? That's the sort of thing you learn from experience.

Eventually, more monster books are made. Now the designers know the system better and are hopefully more aware of the system's emergent properties. But at the same time, the iconic monster concepts were already used for the first monster book! So you might have a better idea on how a troll should be, but the MM already has a troll in it. So now you need to make it a Mountain Troll or something like that, or avoid the troll connection entirely and call it a Gaznab or something. But a gaznab will never be as cool or iconic as a troll, so your superior design will languish while poorly-designed trolls are all over the place.

 

[Teemu]

Marking in 4e isn’t a mental thing. It can be that, but it doesn’t have the charm keyword or anything like that. Like most conditions (and hit points) it’s context-specific, and in the fighter’s case marking is part of their physical attacks briefly interfering with the target’s ability to attack anyone else. A warden’s mark is a magical effect, and so is a swordmage’s. A weapon attack that inflicts the dazed condition would represent things like physical pain or trauma that briefly makes you less capable of acting, whereas a divine attack with the charm keyword that inflicts the dazed condition is a mental and magical effect that prevents you from acting and fighting at full capacity.

 

[Scars Unseen]

We don't know, but we DO know the step between level 1 and level 2, and if that step is the same, then that means the starting point is similar. And all other level up are the same.

That doesn't follow at all. There's a reason that the step before level 1 isn't tracked by any numerical factor like the levels after are. It represents the beginning of a character as an adventurer. What happened before that? That's up to the player, and dictating that all players of all classes - or even within the same class for that matter - must have done an equivalent amount of "stuff" to get to that starting point is anathema to player agency.