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

[bert1001 fka bert1000]

They're completely different monsters though 8n 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.

You preference appears to be the "the same monster, same cliff, same obstacle, growth represented by" the same mechanics. I hear that preference.

However, 4e allows for the same growth "in fiction" from the character perspective, but the mechanics change to help model the fiction of this growth.

It's possible but I don't remember a huge range to monster stat blocks. Usually it was something like 10 levels max. So something starts off as Level X standards/Elites/Solo then Level X+5 they ratchet down, then Level +10 they become minions or something like that. And of course you don't have to use them across the whole range.

Certainly I think it would be more interesting to go from fighting:
Orcs
Ogres
Drow with Ogre minions
Dragons
Demons

vs.

Orcs
Ogres
Tough Ogres
Deep Ogres
Demonic Orges
Primoridial Orges

This paint job treadmill is not neccessary.

 

[Staffan]

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.

A subtler aspect of PF2 here is the way crits work. Any hit with a margin of 10+ is a critical hit. So a 10th level martial (should have an attack bonus of about +21) fighting a 6th level monster (the lowest that's enough of a threat that you get XP for them) will be targeting an AC of about 24, so you hit on a 3 and crit on 13+. That's going to help a lot with chewing through those hit points.

 

[Garthanos]

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

My preference is that it not be misrepresented

 

[Aldarc]

They're completely different monsters though 8n 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.

Reading through the past few pages, I don't think that your preference is actually what is being debated here. I think the issue is less about whether or not you have a preference or even what that preference is, but, rather, it is the accuracy by which you are mis/characterizing this aspect of 4e and what it attempts to model in terms of the fiction.

My preference is that it not be misrepresented

My preference would be for "my preference/opinion" to not constantly be used as the easily defended motte to a lot of indefensible bailey arguments made against 4e.

 

[bert1001 fka bert1000]

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.

Yep, that's the big paradigmn shift. Relative to the PCs this minion's impact is represented as the simple X damage attack or aura or whatever.

 

[Garthanos]

A subtler aspect of PF2 here is the way crits work. Any hit with a margin of 10+ is a critical hit. So a 10th level martial (should have an attack bonus of about +21) fighting a 6th level monster (the lowest that's enough of a threat that you get XP for them) will be targeting an AC of about 24, so you hit on a 3 and crit on 13+. That's going to help a lot with chewing through those hit points.

Interesting indeed. Of course you still have to keep track of things where as in 4e an outclassed enemy going down in one stroke just doesnt take as much math.

 

[AbdulAlhazred]

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.

Yes, and then, almost inevitably, in a system as complex as PF2e someone will figure out how to subvert this choice point enough to make it 'not optional' anymore. This is much like what happened with multi-attacks in 4e and lead to a lot of difficulty. All you really had to do in 4e was add lots of small untyped attack and damage bonuses, and then find a way to reliably multi-attack. A LOT of optimized builds are based on that strategy, and in fact it is pretty much THE way to do good epic damage. There are some variations of course, like 'crit fishing' where you would simply max out your critical hit chance, and then apply that to many attacks per round. Certain class features, like the Barbarian's ability to get additional attacks, could also feature in this process. This is why nothing ever really unseated the Ranger from being damage king, Twin Strike is a gold mine, it almost breaks the game right out of the box! I swear, half the "you can't get this unless you have that" restrictions in 4e were meant to stop everyone else from getting TS, lol. Off-turn attacks were another route to the same thing.

So, my guess is that PF2e does (or will over time) spend a LOT of effort trying to root out and shut down ways to negate that -5 and -10, because players are going to really want to find exactly that, it will essentially multiply their offense considerably. As a game designer, I'm not super impressed with this whole rules construct. I think there must be better ways that don't involve this kind of "one thing compensates for another" design.

 

[Garthanos]

Yep, that's the big paradigmn shift. Relative to the PCs this minion's impact is represented as the simple X damage attack or aura or whatever.

Correct in some cases even when the monsters is using its big gambits they arent having the same tactical impact.... ie the heros are NOT going prone when the ogre tries so its now just a simple x damage attack.

 

[Justice and Rule]

A subtler aspect of PF2 here is the way crits work. Any hit with a margin of 10+ is a critical hit. So a 10th level martial (should have an attack bonus of about +21) fighting a 6th level monster (the lowest that's enough of a threat that you get XP for them) will be targeting an AC of about 24, so you hit on a 3 and crit on 13+. That's going to help a lot with chewing through those hit points.

Plus they are hitting you far less. When the math turns against a foe, you just feel powerful: suddenly you are criting them all the time and they have problems touching you.

Interesting indeed. Of course you still have to keep track of things where as in 4e an outclassed enemy going down in one stroke just doesnt take as much math.

Sure, but at the same time it is very satisfying to drop 6 dice and change to instakill an enemy that could have wrecked you in levels previous. I find it to be a very nice conceptual medium between 4E and 5E.

Yes, and then, almost inevitably, in a system as complex as PF2e someone will figure out how to subvert this choice point enough to make it 'not optional' anymore. This is much like what happened with multi-attacks in 4e and lead to a lot of difficulty. All you really had to do in 4e was add lots of small untyped attack and damage bonuses, and then find a way to reliably multi-attack. A LOT of optimized builds are based on that strategy, and in fact it is pretty much THE way to do good epic damage. There are some variations of course, like 'crit fishing' where you would simply max out your critical hit chance, and then apply that to many attacks per round. Certain class features, like the Barbarian's ability to get additional attacks, could also feature in this process. This is why nothing ever really unseated the Ranger from being damage king, Twin Strike is a gold mine, it almost breaks the game right out of the box! I swear, half the "you can't get this unless you have that" restrictions in 4e were meant to stop everyone else from getting TS, lol. Off-turn attacks were another route to the same thing.

So, my guess is that PF2e does (or will over time) spend a LOT of effort trying to root out and shut down ways to negate that -5 and -10, because players are going to really want to find exactly that, it will essentially multiply their offense considerably. As a game designer, I'm not super impressed with this whole rules construct. I think there must be better ways that don't involve this kind of "one thing compensates for another" design.

See, there aren't any "untyped bonuses" in PF2. There are really a lot fewer bonuses in general, which is good because the math is fairly tight. Hell, if you play with Automatic Bonus Progression there's basically only Circumstance and Status bonuses (which is why it's the best way). They've also been pretty good at balancing the different options for multiattacking and balancing the cost-benefit of each.

 

[Garthanos]

Its also not like level appropriate is 1 level the encounter building guidelines have a range of -4 to +7 for monsters range within which the mechanics remain identical (over all encounter difficulties were +4/-4). Those shifting of roles enable an even greater range of monster useability in a way that shows how per the title of the thread 4e was making enemies so they were themselves tactically distinct.