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

[Thomas Shey]

By the by, I'm not convinced the -5 secondary attack is actually a bad decision in PF2e. Its not as good as some other options, but its not the loser the -10.

 

[Undrave]

Yeah, its weird how the 'culture' of 4e play seemed to eschew things like consumables and rituals to a degree that I never understood. You could actually ALMOST break the game by going against that, some of those things are pretty crazy powerful (there were some magic arrows in AV2 IIRC, or maybe MME, that were crazy good).

Yeah I tried to promote that kind of stuff by handing out residuum and other ritual components as well as stuff like Alchemist's Fire, Alchemist's Acid, Tanglefoot Bags, etc. Throw some consumables in the treasure pile before potions.

I wish 5e had more so you could use the Thief's 'use object' bonus action more!

 

[Nefermandias]

Yeah, its weird how the 'culture' of 4e play seemed to eschew things like consumables and rituals to a degree that I never understood. You could actually ALMOST break the game by going against that, some of those things are pretty crazy powerful (there were some magic arrows in AV2 IIRC, or maybe MME, that were crazy good).

We tended to ignore the consumables in MME because that book brought back the old Cure Wounds potions and they really should have no place within the Healing Surge mechanics, since they are basically free healing.

 

[Neonchameleon]

Yeah, but you are limited by how many you can actually use.

They've been doing the "only one bonus of a type" thing I think since 3.0

Ah, you "I need to have one army stronger than the other" crazyperson.

Nah. Just the "I'll try most things once"

But I suppose "adaptable" was a bad choice of words. I suppose my taste might be broader than yours, for better or worse. For you, I don't think it really fills what you want given that you're not big on 5E and already have 4E.

The thing is 4e is far from the only thing I run or play.

I can't speak for 4E, but to me it runs closer to what I want from D&D. 4E has always been a curiosity for being such a drastic and interesting shift, but my one time playing it was just kind of rough. Admittedly it was the first adventure when it first came out, and as I understand it there were monster math problems at the start, right? I swear no one could hit anyone in that slap-fight of an encounter.

That sounds as if there were dice issues or system understanding issues more than 4e issues. The reasonable starting range for weapon attack rolls at first level in 4e is +5 (Str 16 cleric with an axe) to +9 (Str 20 fighter with a sword or dex 20 rogue with a dagger). The range of ACs in Keep on the Shadowfell including outside and the first level of the dungeon but not the optional boss who doesn't want to fight is 13-18. So that's a range of 4-13 needed to hit before combat advantage.

The monster math problem at the start was that damage didn't scale enough at high level.

Yeah, any time you get a free attack it'll be the bite. I do know a little bit.

But I think the big thing here is that the numbers being played with are very different. Pathfinder 2E combat is generally 3-5 turns, give or take.

So are 4e combats You have more stacking damage, plus encounter, and daily powers

The hitpoints on that Young Dragon are nearly equal to the HP on the Adult Dragon for PF2, which means you probably need a bit more going on if you don't want things to get dull.

You have it in 4e - and encounter and daily powers from the PCs.

 

[Staffan]

I can't speak for 4E, but to me it runs closer to what I want from D&D. 4E has always been a curiosity for being such a drastic and interesting shift, but my one time playing it was just kind of rough. Admittedly it was the first adventure when it first came out, and as I understand it there were monster math problems at the start, right? I swear no one could hit anyone in that slap-fight of an encounter.

I stepped off 4e pretty quickly since my player group bounced off it pretty hard, but I think the monster math problems that were present in the original material mostly showed up at later levels. The early problems are probably more along the lines of:

1. Designers not having the 4e familiarity to write adventures that are good for 4e.
2. Monsters being at-level or higher. This in turn is because
   1. It's 1st level. Lower-level monsters don't really exist.
   2. Remnants of 3e adventure-writing where PC power has escalated through various supplements to where you often want to use several monsters at-level or higher to challenge the party. But doing that in 4e makes for a really rough fight, both because the starting calibration is better and because higher level monsters = better defenses = hit less often = not as fun.

You're missing my point. If you don't do a 2 or 3 action cost action in PF2e you can do three one cost Actions. And normal attacks and cantrips are one cost actions.

Most cantrips, particularly offensive ones, are two-action activities. There are a few one-action ones, like shield, which see a lot of use. And as an elemental sorcerer, I have the focus spell elemental toss as a fairly strong one-action attack spell.

By the by, I'm not convinced the -5 secondary attack is actually a bad decision in PF2e.

It's not a terrible decision (otherwise agile weapons would just be straight-up worse, because why bother when you only make one attack anyway?). But it's bad enough that you want to consider "Do I have anything better I could do with this action?" Sometimes you do, and sometimes you don't.

 

[Neonchameleon]

By the by, I'm not convinced the -5 secondary attack is actually a bad decision in PF2e. Its not as good as some other options, but its not the loser the -10.

Which is part of the point. It's not meant to be a terrible choice. It's just not meant to be the "you must do this" choice - it's a legitimate situational choice.

 

[jmartkdr2]

Well, yeah, but you will want specific sorts of things which don't care much about -5s and -10s... CLEARLY the design problem they ran into was the 3e Fighter multi-attack problem where the only non-stupid thing to do is stand and act like a buzz saw. It appears they addressed it basically by making the penalties SO HUGE that you might as well not bother, and then adding in multi-action 'powers' that effectively double up or triple up. I would look at it more like this: It is like you have some 'minor powers' that you can use, and then you can do something else that is either a highly disadvantaged attack, or else whatever. 4e just has these 'minor powers' be gated in as unlimited use vs the more limited use E/D powers, and then let you have explicitly minor action powers, which USUALLY function as outlets for class features and basically are like "free actions, but we only want you to do one on your turn", which is another way of looking at it.

I mean, obviously it is slightly mechanically different. Wearing my game designer hat, I'm far from blown away. I could make something like this work, but there's always the danger that players will find some scenarios under which attack rolls aren't that significant and suddenly multiply their firepower. Something analogous happens in 4e when players figure out how to create builds that can multi-attack, either via a power that grants that explicitly, or else some clever build options (which generally are highly conditional, etc. but can still work). So, I don't see it as MORE robust in any great sense. My own approach of just getting rid of 'minor action' as an action type seems equally good, overall.

My experience with PF2 just doesn't bear this out - triple attacking is rarely worthwhile, true, but I don't see that as a bad thing. One way to force options is to make every main action have a situational rider, another is to penalize repeating yourself.

Neither game is the perfect roleplaying game for all situations - heck, I'd say 5e DnD is closer to that goal than either - but the 3-action system is a really good way to break down turns while still allowing tactical options during play, especially when compared to the games it's normally compared to: 5e DnD and PF1.

 

[Thomas Shey]

Most cantrips, particularly offensive ones, are two-action activities. There are a few one-action ones, like shield, which see a lot of use. And as an elemental sorcerer, I have the focus spell elemental toss as a fairly strong one-action attack spell.

Ah, I stand corrected. Must be an artifact of the particular ones I tend to use that I never realized that.

It's not a terrible decision (otherwise agile weapons would just be straight-up worse, because why bother when you only make one attack anyway?). But it's bad enough that you want to consider "Do I have anything better I could do with this action?" Sometimes you do, and sometimes you don't.

I've just seen people overstate it, especially lumping it in with the third attack, which really is a "well, I don't have anything better to do" choice. I've done enough damage frequently enough it never felt pointless, and often you really don't have a 2 action cost action or two other 1 action cost ones worth doing (one, almost everyone has; either a move or something like Raise Shield).

 

[Thomas Shey]

My experience with PF2 just doesn't bear this out - triple attacking is rarely worthwhile, true, but I don't see that as a bad thing. One way to force options is to make every main action have a situational rider, another is to penalize repeating yourself.

Neither game is the perfect roleplaying game for all situations - heck, I'd say 5e DnD is closer to that goal than either - but the 3-action system is a really good way to break down turns while still allowing tactical options during play, especially when compared to the games it's normally compared to: 5e DnD and PF1.

Its easy to see it as kind of pointless until you start to see the options in play and when they're attractive. As an example, I don't think people used to games where Full Actions are the thing you want a lot of time and where AoOs are pretty much universal with opponents would think of, let alone realize the benefit in using your third action to move away (and even then, you have to understand how some monsters work to realize robbing them of a third action can be really good).

 

[Staffan]

Its easy to see it as kind of pointless until you start to see the options in play and when they're attractive. As an example, I don't think people used to games where Full Actions are the thing you want a lot of time and where AoOs are pretty much universal with opponents would think of, let alone realize the benefit in using your third action to move away (and even then, you have to understand how some monsters work to realize robbing them of a third action can be really good).

That's one of the tactical points where Pathfinder 2 really differs from 4e. In 4e, moving is a separate thing from attacking: you have one standard action which is usually used for attacking in one way or another, and one move action that's usually used for, well, moving. So unless you're faster than your opponent, there's no use in moving away from them, because they can move and attack just as well as they could make an attack without moving*. In addition, opportunity attacks are a thing pretty much everyone can do if you move away without Stepping first or using some form of shenanigans.

But in PF2, movement is an action like any other. If you move so the enemy can't attack you, it will need to spend an action to follow. And PF2 is FULL of monsters that have some pretty strong things they can do if you let them spend three actions on them, such as a Strike + Grab + Constrict routine.

* This is of course grossly simplified, and you can certainly have tactical reasons for moving around in 4e. The main one I can think of is moving to reduce the monster's ability to catch multiple people in an AOE, or to set up combat advantage for an ally.