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

[Thomas Shey]

Not quite what I meant. Every ogre can be different if you want, but the same ogre should be the same IMO regardless of who is encountering them and what level they happen to be.

Ah. I see. Well, that's at least understandable, though its hard for me to be personally concerned in a game as stylized as games in the D&D sphere already are.

 

[Micah Sweet]

So, so, so, so true!

Beyond that, IMHO, 4e is vastly better using its paradigm in terms of describing QUALITATIVE differences between things like mid-heroic "I'm the toughest guy in this neighborhood" characters vs say mid-paragon "I can climb to the top of Death Mountain and beat everyone in the kingdom in a wrestling match." vs mid-epic "I'm the trusted left-hand of Kord!" and drives the fiction to display those differences. I mean, sure, if you want to play a nonsense game of 4e where things have bizarre DCs that make no fictional sense, be my guest, but that is NOT HOW IT WAS DESIGNED. When you are Epic, you do EPIC STUFF, and that has EPIC DCs. If your epic fighter finds a ladder, he just goes up the damned thing, he's a DEMIGOD, he doesn't need to check to see if he can climb a normal ladder!!!!

My feeling is that the 5e-like approach of non-scaling checks is an attempt to make everyone mundane. Its a 'Gygaxianism' that arose long ago in an early phase of D&D where cutting the PCs down to size so that the GM's map and key offered a challenge was the order of the day. I mean, its also a question perhaps of 'naturalism'. I would agree with anyone that said that largely non-scaling checks and fixed DCs were probably, usually, more realistic, but this is a game of magical elves, I don't want realism in my peanut butter, thank you!

See, that's another issue I have. If someone complains about realism in an RPG, i don't believe "magical elf game" is a reasonable defense. There are levels of realism, and i think departure from real world (or at least Hollywood) should be called out, and otherwise real world is assumed.

 

[Garthanos]

Not quite what I meant. Every ogre can be different if you want, but the same ogre should be the same IMO regardless of who is encountering them and what level they happen to be.

Even though pointless to try and body slam the paragon character the monster should have the mechanics in place that he used against low heroics? ... I disagree I want the complexities that make things tactically interesting when the pcs are low level and the simplifications for when they are able to battle 5 squadrons of them later.

 

[Micah Sweet]

Even though pointless to try and body slam the paragon character the monster should have the mechanics in place that he used against low heroics? ... I disagree I want the complexities that make things tactically interesting when the pcs are low level and the simplifications for when they are able to battle 5 squadrons of them later.

Why would it be pointless? Did the PC get bigger?

 

[Jacob Lewis]

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!

No. It actually works fine the way I described it. And I will continue to do it that way, because I don't have any issues or concerns about that. Nor has anyone I played with doing it that way. So just because you don't agree doesn't mean that it's not a viable, acceptable solution. And it certianly isn't wrong.

Luckily, there are different versions of these games that we can all find to our liking. What the game doesn't need is more people wasting our time and effort to tell everyone else what they're doing is bad or wrong. Off to the corner with you now.

 

[Garthanos]

See, that's another issue I have. If someone complains about realism in an RPG, i don't believe "magical elf game" is a reasonable defense. There are levels of realism, and i think departure from real world (or at least Hollywood) should be called out, and otherwise real world is assumed.

That runs into issues where for one thing only martial types are bound by this. And casters are quite honestly scaled so far beyond anything in legend and myth that they make holding realism as your model for martials beyond a very few levels just ridiculous.

 

[Garthanos]

Did the PC get bigger?

So that is the only kind of progression you think would defeat it and it has to be explicit?

 

[AbdulAlhazred]

I think it might well be better to split the difference and say they each have different kinds of movement. PF2 has potentially more open movement, but 4E's powers create a bunch more "tactical shifts".

Eh, yes and no. I mean, OK, Axgor the dwarf fighter probably just wants to get into the face of Brutal Ogre, pin him in place, and wait for Tricksy the Rogue to slip around back and give him the shiv. He might shift a bit to facilitate that or compensate for some detail of tactics. OTOH when the Gore Troll manages to work around through the difficult terrain and threatens to start chewing on Magisterios the Mighty, shifting back a square and charging the troll MIGHT BE HANDY! If you have some added bennies that help that, like a minor action push you can employ to get the troll off your back without needing to burn a move action, that's even better, and many builds will go for that kind of option. Even if its a standard action push, you have APs and such, so you have plenty of situations where you have the agency to "get this guy off my back and go deal with THAT guy." Or else there's always HOLD and then let Blessedor the Cleric of Bahamut get the ogre off your back first, teamwork is HUGE in 4e.

What OAs do is provide you with hard choices, they are not meant to pin everyone down. The GM can have Brutal Ogre stomp on past Axgor, at the risk of being pinned down and getting hit with an OA. Maybe its worth it sometimes. Likewise Axgor could risk Brutal Ogre's OA to go intercept Gore Troll, it may well be worth it! Complementary builds and tactics can add to these dimensions too.

Beyond that, 4e is less exciting in non-dynamic encounter situations. It is just a truth that if the floor is caving in around you and the flood waters are rising, you probably should move! Or you may WANT to bring the mine's roof down around you, cause you have a way out, but those goblins sure don't... When you incorporate PLOT into combat then all of a sudden all these trade-offs and such start to acquire some really interesting features. I'm guessing this is probably also true of PF2e. One of the issues I have with 5e is it really doesn't help you here much at all. Yes, it handles "3 orcs in a room" better than 4e, but IMHO that isn't saying much, if that's the GM's best, lets find a different table...

 

[jmartkdr2]

Not quite what I meant. Every ogre can be different if you want, but the same ogre should be the same IMO regardless of who is encountering them and what level they happen to be.

The thing is, that's true in every edition of DnD and Pathfinder - a basic ogre is a basic ogre. Ogres don't gain levels just because the pc's do. If you go back to the same camp and fight the same ogres, they should still be level 5. Or if not, the description of them should reflect that they have changed.

4e just presumes you won't be using basic level 5 ogres as a challenge against level 27 pc's, because that would be silly. You're gonna use level 27(ish) monsters, some of whom might be high-level ogre barbarians. It gives you tools for figuring out what it would take for a level 27 Epic Ogre Barbarian Paragon of Nastiness would look like mechanically (AC 37, etc) and assumes you'll describe it appropriately.

That last bit can end up as "it looks like an ogre but purple" if the dm likes to stick with certain monster types - a downside of the system - but if the dm is saying it's a regular ogre but using level 27 stats, that's the dm missing advice in the DMG telling them not to do that. (This is what bounded accuracy was designed to fix, and BA does fix it.)

It's the same with a level 30 ladder - ladders don't level up. The level 1 rickety ladder (DC 10) in the inn's basement is still a level 1 ladder no matter who's climbing it. You just shouldn't use those in dungeons for level 15 characters because a rickety ladder is no longer a challenge for them. You should find an appropriate climbing challenge (DC 25 or so) and use that instead. Admittedly, the DMG does not explain this well, and frankly a book of dungeon/wilderness hazards with level ranges and DCs would have been a cool and useful addition to the library.

 

[Neonchameleon]

But it still usually comes down to "Is it worth using up my Encounter or Daily or not?" Otherwise there's rarely a case where the choice isn't fairly clear cut (at least it wasn't in my experience). In PF2e, the choice isn't clearcut for reasons that have nothing to do with consumable use resources much of the time (as a lot of those action choices are not based on things that are limited use).

This is something that depends a lot on your build. I've had striker characters focusing on single target damage where the encounter powers were really just bigger and harder hitting versions of the at will powers. These have IME been the least interesting for me to play.

Other times my encounter powers have been a collection of reactions that might not even trigger during a fight - or powers that did fundamentally different things such as AoE and crowd control rather than single target damage. There are fights where Hypnotic Pattern is a winning choice and others where it's pointless. Different characters use their encounter and daily powers differently.