The Campaign Builder's Guild

[note]I know D&D isn't quite the favored system on these boards. The CBG did begin on the WotC boards, and try as I might my own game mentality always brings me back to D&D. I've tried to get away from it, but it's proved to be a fruitless endeavour. Rather than fighting it, I'm choosing to embrace it. Maybe, someday, I'll make my own system, but for now I'm going to get back to my houseruling roots. I wrote this essay as a way to focus my thoughts, to give me direction in my process. I'm still waffling on whether I want to import D&D4E ideas to 3E (something I could do and possibly sell legally), or whether I want to import 3E ideas to 4E (I won't be able to sell it, but I might enjoy it more).

Please, contribute any and all of your thoughts.[/note]As a fan of 4th Edition D&D, it is difficult for me to understand what some fans of 3E didn't like about it. Was it simply a resistance to change? Was it something superficial, such as a dislike of certain terms? Was it a dislike of a perceived "sameiness" between different characters? Was it a dislike of rigid powers, or even the use of powers by non-magical characters? Was it anger at having one's favorite class reduced in power?

Because I cannot sit still, I want to work on my own version of D&D before I move on to making my own system; my RPG style suits D&D, and I don't feel like moving on to a different kind of system. But as I like to live in a land of hopes and dreams, I want to make a system that can appeal to fans of 3E and 4E alike. In order to do that, I need to understand the differences, and similarities, between the two systems better. I need to understand what 4E's opponents dislike about the system.

First and foremost, I think the largest of the strong complaints about 4E come from a large difference between it and 3E. 3E, partially, strived to be a simulationist game. There were rules for everything, and everything used the same basic system. Monsters and PCs were built on the same structure, monsters and PCs used the same spells and feats. There were even rules to create every person in a settlement, no matter the size. 4E, on the contrary, knew it was a game on the surface. It told DMs to just make things up and not worry about the rules for many elements of the game. Monsters are built to be challenges for your PCs. Cities are filled with whoever you want to fill them with. The blacksmith is a human who smiths, not a level 8 human expert with 11 ranks of craft (weapons) and craft (armor).

I see the strengths and weaknesses of both approaches, but I think this difference was a large part of the disconnect between fans of 3E and their possible enjoyment of 4E. For some players, a simulationistic system makes them feel like they're part of a world. Without the aspects of a simulation, and with mechanics that feel like game mechanics, they are snapped back to reality and constantly reminded that they're playing a game. So we have our first area 4E could improve upon to bring over 3E's players.

Another large difference between 3E and 4E is the way leveling characters works. In 4E, you choose a character class and stick with it through the entire game. At a certain point, you get to choose from specialties (paragon path at 11th, epic destiny at 21st). You could multiclass, granting you a defining class feature in a higher rarity (at-will becomes encounter, encounter becomes daily) and allowing you to trade powers between the two classes. You could dual-class at 1st level, allowing you to grow as two separate classes from the get-go. 3E, on the contrary, allows you to choose your class at each and every level. One could start as a fighter, then after their character finds religion, they could level up as a cleric. With certain prerequisites, characters could even access prestige classes.

Now, prestige classes had flaws of their own. First, were often more powerful than the base classes, creating an arms race. Second, they were trying to fill two different roles; some PrCs represented prestigious organizations or rare specialties, while others existed to patch up weaknesses in the multiclassing system. Even recognizing these flaws, the 3E class system had strengths that were tied to its simulationist angle. A character could grow organically. Your decisions weren't set from level one. Players could customize their characters greatly.

The third difference I recognize between 3E and 4E is the firm, rigid structure of 4E. While you had choices at each level in 4E, sometimes more frequent choices than existed in 3E, the nature of those choices was always set. At 7th level, you learned a new 1/encounter attack ability, whether you wanted to or not. Now, I'm not certain why anyone wouldn't want to, but I suppose the lack of the ability to choose a non-combat ability, or to have more frequent use of a previous ability or just a stronger version of a previous ability made some players feel restricted. While many classes had these types of restrictions in 3E, they were less restrictive. Sorcerers, for instance, learned new spells at most of their level-ups, but those spells could be offensive, defensive, or utilitarian at the player's discretion.

4E's build system likely exacerbated this feeling of restrictions. Builds made it seem like choices were laid out for you from level 1. Powers granted bonuses to members of certain builds, making them seem like more powerful choices (even if they weren't). Feats were often keyed to certain builds. Some items even synergized with certain builds. These choices could feel like non-choices. Even if 4E's build system helped to prevent players from making weak characters, not having the option to create a weak character could feel like a restriction.

All of these differences are large, system-wide differences. But what about the differences between the core mechanics? I already addressed leveling. The next largest system difference is the skill system. In 3E, characters gained skill points at every level, based on the class they leveled and their intelligence bonus; in 4E, characters started with a number of skills at 1st level and didn't regularly gain more skills. On the surface, these two systems seem to be very different. In practice, a 3E character who does not multiclass could select their max number of skills and simply raise them to max at each level; this will produce similar numbers as a 4E character who selects the same skills at first level.

Perhaps this is, again, the illusion of choice. Technically speaking, DCs did not raise as you gained levels in 3E, but they did in practice. Higher CR traps had higher DCs to locate and disarm. Higher CR opponents had higher skills opposed to player skills. The fantastic challenges one would expect to encounter at higher levels had higher DCs, such as breaking down unbreakable adamantine doors or running across oil-slicked wires strung over windy canyons. 4E codified these DCs in an attempt to balance the game, but it presented the DCs by level rather than presenting the challenges by level. Perhaps this was a failing of presentation?

Feats were largely the same, filling the same role in both 3E and 4E. Some class features moved over to feats, but characters gained more feats, so that should balance out. There were some minor functional differences between equipment; for instance, armors in 3E were presented to largely appear balanced against each other, with higher AC armor having lower Max Dex. Some outliers existed, but largely this held true. 4E's armor system had a hierarchy, with hide armor being better than leather armor, and plate armor being better than scale armor (not withstanding armor check penalties, which are a minor inconvenience). I'm not sure how I should interpret this difference, except to recognize that it might make characters feel like they have to upgrade their armor by purchasing armor proficiency feats, rather than sticking with what the designers gave their class.

Spells changed drastically between 3E and 4E. This change only affects a portion of the classes, as not everyone fully relied upon spells (out of the 11 core classes of 3E, 4 lacked spells all together, and 2 more hardly used their spells). The half of the classes that relied heavily upon their spells contained the most potent of the 3E classes. Any change to those classes' resources could be perceived as an attack upon them, and thus an attack upon the players who favored them. It is well established that Clerics were more powerful than Fighters in 3E, even when the Cleric was performing the Fighter's own role. Rather than accuse spellcaster fans of disliking 4E because they felt their favorite classes were weakened, I'd like to focus on the differences between the spells.

In 3E, spellcasters gained X spells per day of each spell level. Most could prepare which spells they wanted access to each day, and then they cast from this list; some classes learned a smaller list of spells, but they could mix and match what they cast each day. Those spells could be offensive, defensive, or utilitarian; in a game not focused on combat, a wizard could prepare nothing but utility spells, allowing them to feel like their abilities weren't waisted (whether or not non-spellcasters had this opportunity is lost in this example). In 4E, spellcasters (like all classes) learned offensive and defensive defensive spells at certain levels; utilitarian spells were largely grouped together as "rituals" and siloed separately from class powers. Even if a 3E character who parsed their spells out to be able to make it through 3 to 5 battles in a day had the same amount of abilities as a 4E character did in each fight, we again find ourself in a situation where 3E allowed players to feel like they had more choices.

The fact that non-spellcasters had access to the same structure of abilities seemed to put off some players. Some have said this is due to spellcaster players wanting to be better than non-spellcaster players. The suggestion is that spellcasters are the "hard mode" of the game, requiring greater knowledge of the game and greater preparation, and thus they should be rewarded with greater power. Others may not like the use of the same power stucture for casters and non-casters because it leads to a feeling of sameness. Perhaps there are players out there that prefer simplistic characters who don't have to worry about limited use abilities (though I would argue that even a simplistic Fighter grew into a complicated character in 3E, what with the potential of having 18+ feats by level 20), and these players didn't like Fighters having "powers".

Now, I have gone on for twelve paragraphs highlighting why I think some players disliked 4E. It could seem that I'm saying 3E was a better game because of these facts, yet I began saying that I'm a fan of 4E. So what were the strengths of 4E? As many other writers have said, 4E's greatest strength was balance. Characters of the same level did similar damage and their bonuses grew at very similar rates. Instead of one class's attack bonus growing at +1 every 2 levels and another class growing at +1 every level (creating gap that grew so wide, the first class might as well never swing a weapon past the first couple of levels), all character's attack bonuses grew at the same +1 every 2 levels rate.

This balance wasn't just numerical in nature. 4E also balanced opportunity. Non-spellcasters could do cool things, just like spellcasters. Where the wizard could drop a fireball on a formation of enemy soldiers, a fighter could charge into the group and make a series of attacks upon all of them. In combat, everyone could contribute. No body felt left out in a 4E fight. Gone were the days of the fighter playing lineman while the wizard played quarterback, where everyone supported and relied upon the spellcasters and where the spellcasters could replace every other character (why play a traditional group including a Cleric, Fighter, Rogue, and Wizard, when a combat Wizard, a utility Wizard, a melee Cleric and a caster Cleric did the job better?).

4E was also easier to run, at least from my experience. The strengths and abilities of the players was reasonably quantified, and the Challenge Level system was better balanced than 3E's Challenge Rating system. One didn't need to be a master of the system to run it, as so much of it was spelled out for new DMs. Monsters were more interesting to run; even the lowly goblin and kobold had interesting monster abilities. Increasing the power of monsters was as easy as consulting one chart, rather than going through the arcane system of adding hit dice or class levels and upgrading equipment. The existence of minion, elite, and solo monsters created variety in encounter design, and the fact that the basic assumption of the game shifted from 4 players vs 1 monster to 5 players vs 5 monsters made combat more dynamic. The nature of powers also made combat more tactical, as did the definition and quantification of player and monster roles.

Again, not wanting to commit egregious acts of ad hominem, I suspect some of the dislike of 4E stems from an elitist attitude towards 3E and gaming in general. 4E was easier to DM, thus its opponents called it a simpler game. 4E made characters more balanced, and thus they were all the same. 4E gave cool toys to non-spellcasters, and thus they were taking away the toys of spellcasters. 4E spelled quantified powers, and thus made it impossible for players to be "smarter" than their DMs. 4E made it harder to make a purposefully weak character, and thus it was stifling a roleplayer's ability to make the characters they envisioned. Games that reward system mastery and player skill have their place, but perhaps that place is not in a cooperative roleplaying game?

So how could one go about bridging the divide between two editions? The differences between them truly seem to be presentational in nature; whether a spellcaster rolls an attack roll for their spell against a static defense, or a defender rolls a saving throw against a static DC, is largely a matter of feel and not math. Other differences boil down to options. Some are tied to whether or not you want your game to be a game or a simulation of a fantastic world. If I were trying to recreate the feel of 3E while maintaining the balance of 4E, here is what I think I'd have to do:

Classes and leveling: Characters would need to choose a class upon each level up. This system allows for players to feel like their characters are growing organically.

Skills: Skills would need to improve as a character gains levels, and by choice, not automatically. Automatic advancement of skills, even when there are outside options to improve them further still, seems to dissolve verisimilitude.

Spells: Offensive and Defensive spells will need to be reconstituted in the same pool. Different classes will need to access the same spell list, though with minor differences, rather than having their own fully unique spell lists.

Powers: Powers for non-casters will need to be reigned in, perhaps made more optional or quantified in such a way so they don't feel supernatural if the player doesn't want them to.

NPCs and Monsters: NPCs and Monsters will need to be built on a similar chassis as players. NPCs need to be able to be built with stats, from the lowly commoner to the most regal king. Monsters need to use the same spells and abilities as players.

Now, how to do this could prove difficult. There are many mechanical hurdles to cross. If they could be crossed, or even circumvented, a version of D&D could be created that joins the last two editions, creating something greater than the sum of both parts. I strive to make a game that represents the best of both worlds, a balanced, simulationist, game that gives players the option to highly customize their characters. I don't know if it's possible, but I know it will be a fun ride.

I have never played 4E or read any of the rulebooks, but this post makes me want to try it. It's actually the first thing I've read about it (not that I've read a huge amount about it) that makes me want to try it.

I really want to run a game of Red Hand of Doom converted to 4E. I may start working maps into Roll20 and see about running a weekly game online.

A fascinating and illuminating essay.  As an unabashed fan of 3.X D&D - not just over 4th edition but in general, as a gaming system - and now a devotee of Pathfinder, I think I'm fairly close to the archetypal dissatisfied 3rd edition fan who found 4th edition less than stellar.  I'll mix and match my response between general thoughts on 4th edition vs. 3rd edition (in fact, when it comes to actual game mechanics, I will speak largely about the differences between 4th and Pathfinder, which I feel is still very recognizably 3rd edition but much more balanced and fine-tuned) and specific responses to some of your particular points.  I think that unlike some other forums where this sort of thing can get ugly pretty quickly, the CBG is sufficiently gentlemanly that we can have a civilized discourse about the differences between editions; that's awesome.  Obviously, your essay isn't purely an apology for 4th edition: it's as much about identifying the edition's weaknesses as defending it.  Hopefully my post here can help to provide an additional perspective to your guiding questions:

Quote from: XeviatAs a fan of 4th Edition D&D, it is difficult for me to understand what some fans of 3E didn't like about it. Was it simply a resistance to change? Was it something superficial, such as a dislike of certain terms? Was it a dislike of a perceived "sameiness" between different characters? Was it a dislike of rigid powers, or even the use of powers by non-magical characters? Was it anger at having one's favorite class reduced in power?

I am curious, first of all, what you make of Pathfinder, and I wonder why it wasn't mentioned in your essay.  Are you basically just unfamiliar with it?  If so, Paizo has put the rules entirely online (http://www.d20pfsrd.com/) for anyone to peruse.  I stress my affection for Pathfinder because it feels to me that Pathfinder remedies most of the major flaws in 3rd edition without falling into the traps that the designers of 4th edition failed their Perception checks for.

Now, the only 4th edition book I bought was the Player's Handbook.  It's not with me right now, as when I moved I didn't bother bringing it with me.  However, I read the thing pretty thoroughly.  I wish I had the book in front of me so that I could quote from it and perform a close reading, but alas, I'll have to work with the woefully inadequate 4E SRD  (http://www.wizards.com/d20/files/4E_SRD.pdf), which brings me to the first thing I didn't like about 4th edition...

1. The Closed-Off, Exclusivist, Mean-Spirited Business Attitude of Wizards of the Coast for 4th Edition

One of the things that I loved about 3rd edition was the way the rules were presented as "open source" under the OGL.  Anyone could use them, anyone could find them, anyone could publish books using them.  This led to a wonderful plethora of 3rd party works being published, from adventures to campaign worlds to 3rd party splatbooks to complete hacks/rewrites of the game, like Blue Rose.  Some of these products were not so great (along with many Wizards splatbooks), but some were real gems.  The Witchfire Trilogy and Iron Kingdoms books, for example, were extraordinarily good (check out this map (http://www.davidrm.com/rpg/images/FiveFingers-Color.jpg), this art (http://mattwilsonprime.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/05/thewalk.jpg), and these miniatures  (http://privateerpress.com/warmachine/) to see just how good).  Dungeon magazine put out some truly terrific adventures, and its sister publication, Polyhedron, wrote hacks and houserules for the game that could turn D&D into a Sword and Planet adventure, a post-acocalyptic romp, an espionage game, a WWII simulation, a mecha game, and more.  Meanwhile, Wizards itself posted some terrific free content on their site: free maps, free adventures, new monsters, adventure locations, plot seeds, and more (this is all archived here (http://www.wizards.com/default.asp?x=dnd/archives)).  The Wizards forums were teeming with new and exciting content back then, and gave birth to this very site, and I still fondly remember perusing the works of Salacious Angel, Xathan, Luminous Crayon, and others on those boards.  In general, there was a feeling of openness, cooperation, and synergy.  I still bought Wizards products: I bought all the handbooks, plus many magazines, plenty of splatbooks, and several modules.

Then 4th edition happened.  Dungeon and Dragon, with their tradition of freelance submission, were cancelled and replaced by Wizards-only online publications.  The inestimably useful SRD was replaced with a scanty PDF with a few charts and lists.  The online content Wizards used to put out on their website is now subscriber-only - it reminds me of having to pay for extra outfits or weapons or other downloadable content in a video game.  And they made 4th edition effectively closed: no OGL.  There are a few 4th edition campaign settings put out by third party publishers, but it's nothing compared to the content that was put out during 3rd edition's tenure.  The ludicrously restrictive GSL (http://www.wizards.com/d20/files/4e_gsl.pdf), with its squeamish, prudish, puritan insistence that products must not contain any form of sexuality, not to mention "excessive" violence or gore, is simply infuriating

So, the foremost thing that annoys me about 4th edition has nothing to do with its rules or even its presentation and everything to do with the sharkish, unpleasant, big-business way that WotC conducts itself.  It wants to be the sole purveyor of my hobby; it doesn't want innovation or interesting games, it's not interested in what I want to play, it's interested in my money, and nothing else.  Whether or not this attitude is good business sense (I'm inclined to think that ultimately it is actually very poor business sense), it's extremely off-putting.

Even with these changes - this wholesale transformation of the gorgeous, baroque, anarchic, teeming pool of creativity (and, sometimes, crap) that was 3.X publication to the banal, homogenous, Orwellian autocracy that is 4th edition publication - I was willing to give 4th edition a shot.  Then I opened the book...

2. 4th Edition's Aesthetics

This is a matter of taste, of subjective aesthetic preference, but I think my opinion is shared by many.  I deeply dislike the presentation Wizards of the Coast used for 4th edition.  Granted, this is also something I'm not wild about with some Pathfinder works, but it's less pronounced there; also, the style of artwork now prevalent in 4th edition was beginning to become prominent in some aspects of 3rd.  This has been said before, but 4th edition cultivates a certain "cartoonish" quality.  The comparison to World of Wacraft is, I think, very apt: I'm left with the impression that WotC, eager to ape World of Warcraft and thus (they hope) tap into the MMORPG's success, went for art that emphasized bright colours, round contours, and a slightly vacant, air-brushed quality to its characters faces.  Everything looks cleaner, crisper, more polished – and boring.  Compare 4th edition's (https://www.wizards.com/dnd/images/390-amp27-beholder.jpg) Beholders (http://www.fatcult.com/images/beholder-from-dungeons-and-dragons1.jpg) with those of 3rd (http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-0N4aAB9jL-M/TYuoC3HgxpI/AAAAAAAAAJg/orA5dSWt2g8/s400/beholder_70185.jpg) – where the 3rd edition Beholder is a thing of monstrous sinews, terror, and aberrant grotesquerie, the 4th edition looks rather like a grumpy plush toy.  The sketchy, scratchy, concept-art approach of 3rd edition's handbooks, its rather dirty, worn-looking, organic characters and monsters, seemed to have been replaced with a series of glossy anime-inspired models.  No thanks.

Now, granted, this is a pretty superficial objection.  It has nothing to do with the "game itself" or how it's played.  I don't need to use the illustrations in my game.  But the art direction seems to confirm the feeling in the back of my head, the one that WotC's business moves put there: that they're looking to popularize, to dumb down, to appeal to the broadest audience possible.  I don't like that.  Part of what drew me to D&D was the intricate ruleset, the feeling of depth and richness.  Just glancing through the book, I remember frowning and shaking my head.  This wasn't the style of D&D I enjoyed.  It's not just the fact that they changed it that annoyed me, it's the way they changed it, and the reasoning I could surmise behind that change.  I didn't want an antiseptic game, a cartoon, I want D&D.  This brings me to my next point, and the first that's actually mechanical in nature.

3. Cartoonish, Antiseptic, Hand-Holding, Video-Gamey Mechanics

One major thing I didn't like in 4th edition was the feeling that the game had lost any sense of grit, any real bite.  This speaks to your point that:

Quote from: XeviatFor some players, a simulationistic system makes them feel like they're part of a world. Without the aspects of a simulation, and with mechanics that feel like game mechanics, they are snapped back to reality and constantly reminded that they're playing a game. So we have our first area 4E could improve upon to bring over 3E's players.

This is exactly, nail-on-the-head right.  The most glaring example I can think of is Healing Surges.  With a Healing Surge, characters who suffered potentially quite terrible wounds just sort of miraculously brushed themselves off and returned to being good as new, like a cartoon character who's had an anvil dropped on them, or a video game character leaning against a wall to regain their health.  D&D has never had an overly realistic health/HP system; it's always been one of the game's issues.  But 4th edition and Healing Surges make the issue so much more glaring, I couldn't take it.  Not only do Healing Surges feel silly from a realism perspective, they encourage a style of play I don't like.  D&D – at least as I play it – should be a game of danger and desperation (http://dndwithpornstars.blogspot.ca/2013/07/dwindling.html).  If you screw up, you're in trouble.  You have to plan things very carefully.  You have limited resources and when you get cut, you bleed.  The cleric is your best friend.  But now, in 4th edition, you just catch your second wind, pluck out the arrows and go on your merry way.  Mechanics like these reduce the characters to pieces in a boardgame, to tokens, to miniatures in a wargame.  Which brings me to my next major objection:

4. Not Enough Emphasis on Roleplaying

D&D has always been a game of combat and daring, but I feel like for 4th edition, the designers put a lot of stress on combat, while generally neglecting the rest of the game.  This is hardly an original point, of course, but it's one of my major grievances with the system.  In Pathfinder, there are 26 skills, and that's not including the many variations of Knowledge, Craft, and Profession; skills can increase over time, and there's a feeling that your character's skills are pretty darn important.  With some classes, like the Rogue, having a wide variety of skills and lots of skill points to improve them is a major asset, and plenty of these skills have tons of utility outside of combat.  4th edition has 17 skills which improve at a static level.  Which all ties in to the overwhelming sense of...

5. Homogeneity

As you aptly put it:

Quote from: Xeviat4E's build system likely exacerbated this feeling of restrictions. Builds made it seem like choices were laid out for you from level 1. Powers granted bonuses to members of certain builds, making them seem like more powerful choices (even if they weren't). Feats were often keyed to certain builds. Some items even synergized with certain builds. These choices could feel like non-choices.

In a nutshell, 4th edition felt like 3rd edition drained of interesting choices.  Most criminally, for me, was the total decimation of D&D's spell list.  A handful of rituals and a paltry smattering of spells gained automatically every level replaced the sublimely vast repertoire of quirky, bizarre, and character-filled spells of 3rd edition and its kindred.  Every class in 4th edition felt like a re-skinned version of the same class.  Contrary to the opinion that 4th edition is obsessed with balance, I think 4th edition mistakes balance for sameness.

Now, 3rd edition was not perfect, either.  Notably, spellcasters became very powerful after a while, while Fighters and the like seemed to stagnate.  As you note:

Quote from: Xeviat4E also balanced opportunity. Non-spellcasters could do cool things, just like spellcasters.

This is why I like Pathfinder, though: many of the classes are modified to help remedy 3.X balance issues, and with the plethora of multiclassing options, prestige classes, and the like, there are lots of ways to make a character kick ass without being a high-level wizard.  Like maybe I decide to make my Fighter a Pit Fighter who can use dirty tricks and showmanship during his fights, throwing in a level of Rogue or two to give him an edge during flanking manoeuvers.  Pathfinder is more balanced than 3.0 or even 3.5, but it doesn't sacrifice choices or freedom while performing that balancing act; characters feel unique, hand-made.  They have character.  4th edition clucks its tongue at such audacity.  Desperately paranoid that one character might be better than another in combat, it straightjackets you to a pre-planned set of limited choices, sanding off all the sharp corners and telling you what to play.  Which brings me to my final point.

6. Authoritarianism

This, ultimately, is what I dislike about 4th edition, from its mechanics to the attitudes of its creators.  All of it – its simplified mechanics, its rigid class progressions, its limited options, its dumbed down skill system, its dearth of spells and multi-classing, its paternalistic publishing practices – smacks of a kind of overriding authoritarianism.  4th edition D&D feels like a walled garden; 3rd edition feels like a fun (and filthy) sandbox.  In 4th edition, my friends and I are handed a bunch of near-identical toys painted different colours without small, moving parts (lest we choke) or sharp edges (lest we cut our widdle fingers).  In 3rd edition we are thrown into a heap of parts and pieces and told to make it up and build something cool.  In 4th edition there are Characters and then there are Monsters.  In 3rd if I wanted to play a Half-Fiend Goblin Druid/Rogue/Shadowdancer, I could.   That's what I liked about 3rd edition: the feeling of possibility, the crusty, pockmarked utility of it, the way everything could be changed and remade and reassembled in a million combinations.

EDIT:

Oh, and I really bloody hate what they did to Alignment and the Cosmology in 4th edition.  The way they handled Alignment in 4th is just unbelievably dumb.  Why no Lawful Evil?  Why no Chaotic Neutral?  Lawful Neutral?  It's like the took out the best Alignments!

Well, of course, I can't resist chiming in. :grin:

Quote from: Xeviat3E, partially, strived to be a simulationist game. ... 4E, on the contrary, knew it was a game on the surface.

I'm not sure if the problems can really be boiled down to "simulationist" vs. "gamist." I mean, I understand where that comes from, but I think the problem in 4th edition isn't so much that you're reminded that you're playing a game, it's that the reminders are jarring and insulting. Things like the skill challenge system being an incoherent mess. Or the existence of daily martial powers making no sense. Or overly grindy combat encounters. Or the lack of a lot of non-combat uses for most of your powers. Or... well, basically not being able to RP well because the "gamiest" crap keeps getting in your face and interfering with your thought process and reminding you that this game really wishes it was a MMORPG.

Quote from: XeviatAnother large difference between 3E and 4E is the way leveling characters works.

I think 4th edition's approach to "multiclassing" where you can go look at another class's list of powers and grab something juicy could have almost been something worthwhile. This actually works better, I think, than 3e, because you can always get something (ostensibly) level appropriate. In 3e, you really had to plan out your "build" in advance and a lot of times a dip wasn't worth anything, except if it was a very front-loaded class; more often it just held up progression in your main class. Of course, then they screwed it all up in 4e because some class features were just plain better than other class features so the whole idea of picking from a buffet of ostensibly balanced options fell apart. So whatever.

Quote from: Xeviat4E codified these DCs in an attempt to balance the game, but it presented the DCs by level rather than presenting the challenges by level. Perhaps this was a failing of presentation?

I think it definitely was. While there may not be any difference in practice between 4th edition's scaling DCs and 3rd edition players going from the "Forest of DC 10 challenges" to the "Mountain of DC 20 challenges" to the "Evil Temple of DC 30 challenges," in the latter case, it feels like you're progressing through an organic world. Even before you're at a level you're able to take on the temple, it's still there. It exists and is part of the world. On the other hand, 4e's challenges just arbitrarily scale as your level goes up without any sense of connection to the world or the story.

Quote from: XeviatThis balance wasn't just numerical in nature. 4E also balanced opportunity. Non-spellcasters could do cool things, just like spellcasters.

The idea of "casters > you" was a definite and real problem with 3rd edition. I think it was a real failing of the system that it wasn't possible to make a Fighter who could do nearly the amount of "cool stuff" that a Wizard could. However, I don't really agree with your assertion, because I don't think 4e solved it in the right way; it seems more like it curtailed everyone's opportunity to do cool stuff, particularly when that "cool stuff" doesn't fit into 4e's neat little grid-based combat minigame. Iconic and weird spells from 3e got removed or nerfed into stupid rituals. Everything got simplified and reduced to the lowest common denominator. And the worst part is that none of this managed to really reduce the amount of system mastery necessary to build something "optimal," which I think would have been a laudable and achievable goal for 4e.

Quote from: XeviatI suspect some of the dislike of 4E stems from an elitist attitude towards 3E and gaming in general.

I've been generally critical of 4e for a long time, but I've always tried to avoid any sort of ad hominem and stay pretty objective, or, at least, when objectivity isn't possible, confine it to my opinions about the game rather than the people who play it. Hopefully I have succeeded!

I've never really understood all the hate 4E has received. To me it's a rules tight, fun game. The biggest problem I think people have with it - and they don't really realize it - is that the game is more rigid than previous editions. Look at all the really cool things people do with 3.5 - new races, new classes, new spells, new feats, new everything. House rules and new content are an endemic quality of 3.x. There's nothing stopping people from doing the same with 4E but, for some reason, they don't do it. They stick to the game as presented (races, classes, powers, feats, etc.). I look at all the campaigns I've played online and all of the 4E games have been by the book with very few house rules and almost zero new content.

The reasoning behind this, from my perspective, is twofold. First, 3.x is a broken system that is fraught with problems, both big and small. House rules are almost mandatory to balance the game and make it better. 4E, by contrast, is a much tighter system that has far fewer issues (until you get to the epic tier). You don't need new rules to make the system work because it is already solid. Secondly, the presence of the official character creator hampers new content because it cannot be easily added to the system (doubly so when it went online). There is a downward pressure (from WotC) and an upward pressure (from players) on the DMs to not generate new content because it is not really compatible with the system as provided.

One of my players often derides 4E for feeling too much like an MMO. I laugh at this comment because his favorite class in 3.x is the Warblade, which has a power mechanic that was created to test 4E's power mechanic.

To me, the only time 4E ever feels like an MMO is when players look at the world around them in terms of what their powers can do, rather than thinking like a person living in a fantasy world. To help alleviate this mentality, I've always been a proponent of is handing out rituals like candy. They add a sense of mystery back into the game that is sorely lacking.

In the spirit of debate (not the first fires of a flame war)...

Quote from: Elemental ElfI've never really understood all the hate 4E has received. To me it's a rules tight, fun game. The biggest problem I think people have with it - and they don't really realize it - is that the game is more rigid than previous editions. Look at all the really cool things people do with 3.5 - new races, new classes, new spells, new feats, new everything. House rules and new content are an endemic quality of 3.x. There's nothing stopping people from doing the same with 4E but, for some reason, they don't do it. They stick to the game as presented (races, classes, powers, feats, etc.). I look at all the campaigns I've played online and all of the 4E games have been by the book with very few house rules and almost zero new content.

Well, you can go and make houserules and new content for 4E, but it's not set up to encourage that kind of choice.  It's set up to be a rigid, by-the-book game where you play what the book tells you.  Innovation goes against its grain, sticks in its craw.  In 3.X, the mechanics of the game (multiclassing, lots of skills, prestige classes, monsters have the same stats as characters, tons of spells) encourage innvoation and customization.  Even if you do come up with some new material for 4E, you sure as hell can't publish it and get paid for it, unless you've been given a licence and a pat on the head by the suits at Hasbro.

QuoteFirst, 3.x is a broken system that is fraught with problems, both big and small. House rules are almost mandatory to balance the game and make it better.

I'd contend that Pathfinder does a pretty decent job of fixing a lot of those.  I'll also take rusty-but-with-choices over shiny-but-with-none any day.

QuoteYou don't need new rules to make the system work because it is already solid.

Solid... and, to my eyes anyway, fairly boring and samey.

QuoteThere is a downward pressure (from WotC) and an upward pressure (from players) on the DMs to not generate new content because it is not really compatible with the system as provided.

Yeah, this, in spades.

QuoteTo me, the only time 4E ever feels like an MMO is when players look at the world around them in terms of what their powers can do, rather than thinking like a person living in a fantasy world

I think this is exactly right - 4E constantly reminds you it's a game.

QuoteTo help alleviate this mentality, I've always been a proponent of is handing out rituals like candy. They add a sense of mystery back into the game that is sorely lacking.

Rituals are easily my favorite thing about 4E.  When I finally got to them it was like a breath of fresh air.  So good for you for emphasizing them!

Elemental Elf, I think we might be in more agreement than I thought we were when I started that post.

Xeviat, to address your specific hacks to "fix" 4E for the 3E complainer (like me):

Quote from: XeviatClasses and leveling: Characters would need to choose a class upon each level up. This system allows for players to feel like their characters are growing organically.

This would help hugely.

Quote from: XeviatSkills: Skills would need to improve as a character gains levels, and by choice, not automatically. Automatic advancement of skills, even when there are outside options to improve them further still, seems to dissolve verisimilitude.

Definitely, you've got it.

Quote from: XeviatSpells: Offensive and Defensive spells will need to be reconstituted in the same pool. Different classes will need to access the same spell list, though with minor differences, rather than having their own fully unique spell lists.

For me, this doesn't go far enough, personally, and in fact giving different classes the same spell list feels like a drift towards homogeneity rather than away from it.  What would be better would be more spells, with more character, for different classes, IMO.

Quote from: XeviatPowers: Powers for non-casters will need to be reigned in, perhaps made more optional or quantified in such a way so they don't feel supernatural if the player doesn't want them to.

I can see this working, though I don't think it's as necessary as your class and skill fixes.

Quote from: XeviatNPCs and Monsters: NPCs and Monsters will need to be built on a similar chassis as players. NPCs need to be able to be built with stats, from the lowly commoner to the most regal king. Monsters need to use the same spells and abilities as players.

Hell yes, this is vital.

Quote from: XeviatNow, how to do this could prove difficult. There are many mechanical hurdles to cross. If they could be crossed, or even circumvented, a version of D&D could be created that joins the last two editions, creating something greater than the sum of both parts. I strive to make a game that represents the best of both worlds, a balanced, simulationist, game that gives players the option to highly customize their characters. I don't know if it's possible, but I know it will be a fun ride.

Best of luck!

I remain curious about your opinions on Pathfinder, of course.

The only thing I will say about Pathfinder is that it did not solve 3E's biggest problem: Scaling. Watch:

Spell DCs are DC 10 + Spell Level + Ability Modifier. For primary spellcasters, "spell level" roughly equates to "1/2 level" when you're using your topped out spells.

Low Saves scale at +1/3 level. At level 20, without items that run come in offensive and defensive varieties, a Caster is going to be sitting on DC 19 + ability mod while a character's low saves are going to be at 16 + ability modifier. Coupled with their less likelyhood of increasing their tertiary ability scores, you run into a situation very easily where you might as well not roll your low defense if targeted by an effect.

Skills are worse. Even if a fighter puts cross class ranks into spot/listen, an equal level rogue (or worse, an assassin) will always get the drop on them. When you're dealing with a rogue's 23+Dex+more to hide/move silently and a fighter's 11+Wis+something to spot/listen ... welp, the Fighter's screwed. Make a Fort save for death from massive damage (or just a save vs. death if you were unlucky to be snuck up on by an assassin).

4E did a lot to fix this scaling problem. There are more things it could have done.

If I were to fix 3E (or Pathfinder) up to my liking, I'd have to tackle this first. BAB would be turned into a damage bonus, and attack/save bonuses would scale evenly (doesn't mean they have to start at the same point). But the numbers are so big (20d6 damage from a spell) that they have to be countered by resistances (20 or 30 energy resistance by my calculations), that simply reducing the numbers and getting away from some of the redundancies ends up bringing you right back to 4E.

Quote from: Steerpike

Quote from: XeviatSpells: Offensive and Defensive spells will need to be reconstituted in the same pool. Different classes will need to access the same spell list, though with minor differences, rather than having their own fully unique spell lists.

For me, this doesn't go far enough, personally, and in fact giving different classes the same spell list feels like a drift towards homogeneity rather than away from it.  What would be better would be more spells, with more character, for different classes, IMO.

I remain curious about your opinions on Pathfinder, of course.

You misunderstand me. What I mean is that the spells that the Bard, Cleric, Druid, Sorcerer, and Wizard, and to a lesser extent the Paladin, Ranger, and others, is found in the same chapter. Some spells appear on multiple lists. What I mean is that instead of several classes getting a spell that deals damage and slows, they simply get access to the same spell.

As for Pathfinder, I've been quoted calling it the "Bawwwwww" edition. I think it fixes a lot of what needed to be fixed, but I don't think it was bold enough to fix other things.

Right now, I'm looking at altering some of the class structure of 4E. I'm looking into making it so all classes don't have access to the same progression of Encounter and Daily powers. Some classes, like the Fighter and Rogue, will likely lack Dailies entirely. Some classes will be made almost entirely of Dailies, like the Wizard. A core problem I've recognized in 4E is the "samieness" of characters, so I think giving different characters different "energy mechanics" to play with will help.

As for a real quick idea, how about instead of the Fighter having some type of refreshing encounter resource, what if I simply scale their frequency of critical hits. Then, the critical hit system can be expanded to have options other than damage. I can play with the math easily enough; if fights at level 20 are supposed to last 8 rounds, and players are supposed to have 4 encounter powers, and the hit rate is around 50%, then dropping a fighter's crit range from 20 to 16-20 is going to make half of their hits crits. Or something.

As with you, I am not trying to start a flame war in any way. :)

The 4E's frame work no more helps or hinders people's efforts to house rule than 3.x did. You've touted the abundance of skills as a benefit but, reasonably, how many of those skills were actually used? Only a handful I'd wager, especially if you add the "on a regular basis" restriction. You shouldn't need a craft skill to say that you can craft a piece of gear. You don't need a performance skill to say you can dance. You don't need a profession skill to prove you are a fisherman. Those are all ancillary tasks that should be settled by DM fiat or a simple ability roll (i.e. the way it was handled in editions that came before 3.x).

One of the things that has long baffled me about 3.x is that there is such a massive skill list - full of wondrously specific and niche abilities - yet Fighters only get 2 skills per level. Even the rogue gets just 8 per level. It's criminally negligent to design a game where there are so many skills available - each with very specific and precise rules - and then NOT give the players the ability to take ranks in more than a handful. This is doubly true for all of the skills that are "trained only." That's one aspect of 3.x that I absolutely abhor and I see it perpetuated in each d20 game WotC pumped out and every derivative 3rd party game. I find it quite maddening.

A smaller number of skills ensures that a fair amount of the time, someone in the party is going to have a particularly useful skill. It makes designing adventures more fun and easier when players have the skills that the game created.

Pathfinder did not fix any of big picture problems inherent to the d20 system. It just coated a thick layer of paint over top a rusted, dilapidated frame. Heck, it even added terrible issues of its own (I'm looking at you Summoner).

If you disregard spells and class design, the basic game of 3.X and 4E are, essentially, exactly the same. The difference is that 4E does not let the eccentricities of previous iterations of the game seep in to corrupt and/or weaken the core of the game. That is definitely both positive and a negative, depending on your perspective and what you desire most out of the game. I think fair play is something that should be encouraged. Allowing Clerics, Druids and Wizards to be so much more powerful on their own is a detriment to the game. I don't think any class should be ostensibly more powerful than any other class. That's one reason why I like 4E, it is a much fairer system to all players regardless of class choice.

3E reminds me of the fact that it is a game just as often as 4E does. The difference is that, for some people, they become obsessed with starring at their character sheets instead of looking at the bigger picture. This too happens all of the time with Spellcasters in 3.x. When people have a set number of options that are thrust right in front of their face, they tend to forget that there are other things they can do. I can't count the number of times I've seen players forget about all the cool things they can do with skills or combat maneuvers (bull rush, grappling, tripping, etc.) and instead just decide to attack the monster again.

What I think 4E did remarkably well was presenting a vision for the game. You are adventurers who delve into forgotten dungeons, slay monsters and find treasure. Everything in 4th edition is really geared around this core principle. It relies on DMs and players to flesh out the world around that core concept, rather than having it fed to them in the core rules. Those that don't like 4E often feel entombed by this core vision. They don't want to create the house rules necessary for them to enact their grand vision (which is often striking because they do it for 3.x all the time).

Ahh, I see.  That does make more sense.

QuoteSkills are worse. Even if a fighter puts cross class ranks into spot/listen, an equal level rogue (or worse, an assassin) will always get the drop on them. When you're dealing with a rogue's 23+Dex+more to hide/move silently and a fighter's 11+Wis+something to spot/listen ... welp, the Fighter's screwed. Make a Fort save for death from massive damage (or just a save vs. death if you were unlucky to be snuck up on by an assassin).

But that's not the way Pathfinder skills work.  In Pathfinder, there's no such thing as cross-class skills (ther are class skills, but they just provide a one-time +3 bonus), so a Fighter who wants to and puts his skill points in the right places can keep up much better with a Rogue on Perception vs Stealth.  

I suppose I sort of see the scaling argument, generally, but I am much less perturbed about it.  If a level 20 fighter is continuosuly getting screwed by Rogues getting the drop on him he needs to use some of his many feats to take (or retrain for) Alertness and Uncanny Alterness and/or get the party wizard/cleric to buff him.  If he's getting owned by wizards dominating him he needs to take (or retrain some feats to get) Iron Will and Improved Iron Will (maybe Shake It Off as well) and buy some potions of Owl's Wisdom.  Or go do a quest to get a magic item that buffs his wisdom.  Characters are meant to work as a team to cover their weaknesses; that's part of what I see as balance.  And characters should have major vulnerabilites; overcoming them is what makes them interesting.

Frankly, I think the Fighter is one of the biggest problems with any variant of 3.X, but whenever I've played Fighters or had people play Fighters multiclassing is almost inevitable, so it's a problem that sort of fixes itself, in a weird way.

QuoteWhat I think 4E did remarkably well was presenting a vision for the game. You are adventurers who delve into forgotten dungeons, slay monsters and find treasure. Everything in 4th edition is really geared around this core principle. It relies on DMs and players to flesh out the world around that core concept, rather than having it fed to them in the core rules. Those that don't like 4E often feel entombed by this core vision. They don't want to create the house rules necessary for them to enact their grand vision (which is often striking because they do it for 3.x all the time).

Right, but this is exactly the source of my objection to 4E.  The very mechanics of 4E (as well as the way that Wizards of the Coast has seen fit to publish the rules) seem set up to deter, inhibit, and problematize house-ruling and customization of this sort.  With the purposely limited spell lists, lack of multi-classing, seperate monster vs. racial/character rules, lack of prestige classes, lack of SRD, lack of OGL, and general pruning of features, 4E is undoubtedly more balanced, but it's ill-suited for casual/modular tinkering, whereas 3.X, for all its quirks and irregularities (some of which Pathfinder has mitigated, if not fully "solved"), was a very adaptible, flexible system that naturally inclined itself to tinkering and customization.  You have to really go against the grain of 4E core mechanics - like Xeviat is talking about doing, totally changing the way class levels, skills, and spells are handled - in order to get the same degree of individuality and customization from a 4E character as you can with a 3E character.

It's not that people are lazier with 4E, it's that 3E actively encouraged creativity, whereas 4E, though a better wargame, discourages it - at least, that's my take.

Let me start by acknowledging I have a bias towards Skill-based systems.

For my money (quite literally - I only ever purchased the Player's Handbook and sold that on at only a minor loss) the problem with 4E was the way that it took and ran rampantly out of control with the most troubling (for me and my wider gaming circle) aspect of 3E - the Feat.

Feats are something I just have an inherent problem with from just about every angle - from a 'gamist' angle they clutter up the system by attempting the inherently impossible task of statting up every possible tactical choice ever rather than allowing a system flexible enough to represent infinite tactical choices; from a 'simulationist' angle the idea that only some actions in combat correspond to an improvement in efficiency and only in the cases of certain characters is extremely damaging to verisimilitude; from a 'narrativist' angle the idea that a character is inherently limited in the interesting things they can try in combat is one that doesn't encourage interesting story-telling - and putting aside the rather controversial GNS paradigm, Feats to me just feel like pointless clutter for the sake of clutter that represent a concept (special training/tactics/maneuvers/etc) much better handled through a flexible Skill-system.

Powers were like a grossly out-of-control version of Feats gone even more rampant (at the expense of the Skill system, may I add) and just turned me right off 4E entirely, being representative of everything I had disliked about Feats in the first place (which they then kept, in addition to Powers, a decision that was just the icing on my dislike cake).

Ultimately, I think 4E was unintentionally the best and most faithful attempt at writing an RPG for World of Warcraft that we have yet seen (far better than any published version thus far) but a dismal failure at trying to innovate and improve on the previous edition of D&D, as had been the idea behind new editions up to that point.

Quote from: Hippopotamus DundeePowers were like a grossly out-of-control version of Feats gone even more rampant (at the expense of the Skill system, may I add) and just turned me right off 4E entirely, being representative of everything I had disliked about Feats in the first place (which they then kept, in addition to Powers, a decision that was just the icing on my dislike cake).

Yeah, I get this.  Powers are exactly the kind of thing that, for me, obtrudes into the game's versimilitude in a way that 3E doesn't.  Like encounter or daily powers - let's say I'm a Fighter, your run-of-the-mill non-magical knight, and I want to use the Brute Strike ability or whatever.  Why can I use this only once per encounter?  Because the game's balance requires it: no other real reason.  I guess my character got tired or something (though not so tired they can't use a different per-encounter power...).  It's very video-gamey: I can practically picture a little cooldown icon as the power recharges.  It calls attention to its game-ness.  At least with feats, they were abilities you just had access to.

I think fighter encounter powers should have been pooled and powered by points (like the Psionics system of 4E).

Designing them without encounter powers, though, would be very difficult to do and keep the same multiclassing system of 4E.

This is a bit off-topic, but Xeviat, I'm curious - what do you think of fantasy RPG alternatives like GURPS, Burning Wheel, or "OSR" retroclones like Castles & Crusades, Labyrinth Lord, or Lamentations of the Flame Princess?

Really, I'm wondering what your overriding design philosophy and system goals are.  What kind of game are you envisioning, and what do you want your 4E hack to accomplish, in broad terms?  How do you want the game to play, to feel?  I don't mean like "I want a hybrid of 3.5 and 4th edition," I mean like "I want a game of epic heroism where the characters are larger than life," or "I want a game of gloom and medieval darkness where the players must claw their way up from nothing," or "I want a highly immersive game, one invested with a sense of realism and grit," or "I want a very light, casual game that's fundamentally about tactical challenges."

I ask because with your approach so far, I think I get a sense of what you want to accomplish, but I want to know more about why, beyond simply pleasing players.  At the end of the day, what kind or style of game is the system in service of?  I tend to think that there's no platonic ideal for gaming systems, but that different systems suit different games.

4E is a direct response to everything that happened in 3.x. The OGL proved too volatile for WotC's management's tastes. It's obvious why they would think that and it's understandable why they closed 4E off. Pathfinder exemplifies why 4E became such a closed system. Other companies using your intellectual property was considered anathema to a sound business model. I was honestly surprised that WotC decided to allow any third party participation.

I remember the WotC forums leading up to 4E being awash with people who wanted a tighter rule-set, wanted the Fighter and the Rogue to be less replaceable by magic items, wanted zero dead levels, wanted magic items to be standard, wanted less assumed power for the DM, wanted monsters to feel more exciting, wanted the game to be more pick up and go, etc.

All of that was given by WotC in spades.

However, once the masses got what they had been clamoring for, they were angry because what they really wanted was the same thing just slightly different (i.e. Pathfinder).

What I think 4E really messed up on was how they presented the material. When I first opened the 4E PHB I was pissed! I sat in a London Hostel thumbing through the book trying to grasp why there were all these spells in my PHB. I really wonder if people (including myself) would have been as cheesed off if the powers had not presented in the form of cards but rather in the manner in which  spells had presented in 3.x (i.e. just words on a page). That might of lessened my initial dislike of the system some what.

Regardless, I think 4E's greatest strength - it's stalwart devotion to a vision - is also its greatest weakness. What WotC failed to anticipate was the fact that very few groups approach the game in the same way. Diversity has always been a hallmark of D&D and in many ways 4E was a rejection of diversity in favor of a singular vision. Worked for some people, not others. The ironic part of this is that other RPG's live and breathe on forcing one vision down your throat.

5th edition seems to be running as far away as it can in the opposite direction - every thing is going to be DM and house rule focused. We'll see if WotC can pull that off (the last few play test packets have not endeared me to the game in the way the very first packet had).


I'm not sure I quite understand the complaints against monsters and PCs using different mechanics for their generation. To me, that just makes sense. I definitely want humanoid enemies to use the same mechanics but Dragons, Zombies, Minotaurs, Aboleth's, etc. feel radically different than normal humanoids. The process to creating them should be different but just as intuitive and easy as generating humanoids. I really liked 4E's Monster Manuals. I love the fact that I can open the book and run a Dragon. You can't do that in any other edition of the game.

Half the time in 3.x getting the right CR down when creating a brand new monster was more art than science. 4E would be no different. If I wanted to make a Half-Dragon Minotaur in 3.x, I would take the minotaur, add the Half-Dragon template...

Ok so it is easier in 3.x. But I liked the stat block from 4E more than 3.x's. I liked that each monster had one or two memorable abilities, it made every monster feel unique. Of course that could easily be retrofitted to 3.x...

Bah!

Too much thought of mechanics.

I like 4E for what it is - a WARGAME/rpg. I like 3.x for what it is - wargame/RPG.

I agree with the intent of 5th edition - D&D should be a basic game with a whole lot of add-ons that allow DM's to adapt the game to resemble their vision of their campaign setting AND tailor the game to fit their group's playstyle. In that regard, 4E failed. 3.x wasn't far behind what with its battle-grids and over-powered magic but the openness of the system and the allowance for some divergence helped surmount that obstacle and help make 3.x feel less constrained.

As an aside, it will be fascinating to see what the Pathfinder community does once 5th edition releases and Paizo releases Pathfinder 2nd Edition ( you know it will happen eventually).

Quote from: Steerpike

Quote from: Hippopotamus DundeePowers were like a grossly out-of-control version of Feats gone even more rampant (at the expense of the Skill system, may I add) and just turned me right off 4E entirely, being representative of everything I had disliked about Feats in the first place (which they then kept, in addition to Powers, a decision that was just the icing on my dislike cake).

Yeah, I get this.  Powers are exactly the kind of thing that, for me, obtrudes into the game's versimilitude in a way that 3E doesn't.  Like encounter or daily powers - let's say I'm a Fighter, your run-of-the-mill non-magical knight, and I want to use the Brute Strike ability or whatever.  Why can I use this only once per encounter?  Because the game's balance requires it: no other real reason.  I guess my character got tired or something (though not so tired they can't use a different per-encounter power...).  It's very video-gamey: I can practically picture a little cooldown icon as the power recharges.  It calls attention to its game-ness.  At least with feats, they were abilities you just had access to.

The justification for Martial Encounter Power is that they are extremely complex maneuvers that require precises timing, a fair bit of luck and a ton of exertion. You can only reasonably set yourself and your opponent up for that maneuver once a combat.

Martial Dailies stretch even my believability (and I'm already stretching it for encounter powers).

The problem is how do you make Fighters feel more powerful without giving them encounter powers or resorting to the tried and true  "taking things everyone should be able to do but we've made a feat, which means you need this feat to do that thing" method?

I think D&D Next is doing well with this by giving Fighters abilities to increase their AC or make their attacks do more damage but there have been more than a few complaints online that that method is just as boring as Fighters who rely on iterative attacks.

Another method would be to greatly reduce the power Spellcasters have but we all know the belly aching that comes with that decision.

We could return to an era of uneven leveling up, where "weaker" classes level up faster than stronger classes. That isn't a bad method, honestly, but needs to be finely tuned or else the whole system will collapse.

In the end, there is no right answer for everyone. The best the game can do is offer plenty of options to player and DMs and allow individual groups to implement the solution that works best for them.

Quote from: Elemental ElfOther companies using your intellectual property was considered anathema to a sound business model.

I don't think this really follows.  Look at Valve.  They let anyone use their Source engine.  You think they don't sell tons of copies of Half-Life 2, Team Fortress 2, Left 4 Dead, etc?  They're doing just fine.  There are ways of keeping the game open that can make sense business-wise.  And, at least in my case, I'd give my money to Paizo (who are still using the OGL) before Wizards, in part because they're so open and collaborative.  Unless 5th edition proves truly awe-inspiring, I probably won't buy another actual D&D product ever again.

Whether or not it was a sound business decision, ultimately, has nothing to do with which edition I prefer; I still prefer 3E because it was open, even if that means Wizards made less money.

QuoteThe ironic part of this is that other RPG's live and breathe on forcing one vision down your throat.

I think a few of the more successful ones these days - Fate/Fudge, GURPS, even d20 in its various iterations - have started averting this pretty hard.

QuoteThe justification for Martial Encounter Power is that they are extremely complex maneuvers that require precises timing, a fair bit of luck and a ton of exertion. You can only reasonably set yourself and your opponent up for that maneuver once a combat.

Yeah, still not buying it.  If that was the case why can you use a second-but-different Encounter power but not the same one again?  And even so, the whole idea is a bit silly.  I agree with HD - why not make it a skill roll?  Or, you know, a Combat Maneuver check.

QuoteThe problem is how do you make Fighters feel more powerful without giving them encounter powers or resorting to the tried and true  "taking things everyone should be able to do but we've made a feat, which means you need this feat to do that thing" method?

Definitely, this is the problem.  My only solutions, really, are multi-classing and prestige classes, which isn't a great solution.  But I prefer Monks, Paladins, Rangers, and Barbarians anyway.

EDIT:

QuotePathfinder exemplifies why 4E became such a closed system

I think this is actually sort of the reverse of what happened.  As I understand it, the whole reason Pazio started putting out Pathfinder is because, with the advent of 4th edition, Wizards canceled Dungeon and Dragon (which used to be pretty much all Pazio did) and made the game closed.  Pathfinder was a response to 4th edition being closed and restricted, not a cause.

Quote from: Steerpike

QuoteThe justification for Martial Encounter Power is that they are extremely complex maneuvers that require precises timing, a fair bit of luck and a ton of exertion. You can only reasonably set yourself and your opponent up for that maneuver once a combat.

Yeah, still not buying it.  If that was the case why can you use a second-but-different Encounter power but not the same one again?  And even so, the whole idea is a bit silly.  I agree with HD - why not make it a skill roll?  Or, you know, a Combat Manouver check.

I'm with Steerpike - the idea itself bears very little resemblance to anything I've ever heard, read or experienced in regards to martial practice, and furthermore it is doesn't hold up even within its own logical structure.

And honestly SP, I'm a big fan (and this speaks to the question of addressing Fighter variety) of taking Base Attack Bonus and holding it into the Skill system along with an active defense roll rather than a static AC. That way Fighters can choose which they want to favour (increasing options) and can be given just as many Skill points as anyone else, simply with the understanding they're probably going to spend them on Combat Skills.

Quote from: Steerpike
I don't think this really follows.  Look at Valve.  They let anyone use their Source engine.  You think they don't sell tons of copies of Half-Life 2, Team Fortress 2, Left 4 Dead, etc?  They're doing just fine.  There are ways of keeping the game open that can make sense business-wise.  And, at least in my case, I'd give my money to Paizo (who are still using the OGL) before Wizards, in part because they're so open and collaborative.  Unless 5th edition proves truly awe-inspiring, I probably won't buy another actual D&D product ever again.

I agree with you - I think open systems work better in the long run than closed systems. However, WotC's management disagreed because they did not see the the inherent difference between people buying other companies' products and people buy other companies' products that are completely compatible with your product. I think 4E would have been vastly more popular had it been an open system like 3.x.  Personally, I think WotC really just wanted third party companies to use the d20 System Trademark License.

Quote from: SteerpikeWhether or not it was a sound business decision, ultimately, has nothing to do with which edition I prefer; I still prefer 3E because it was open, even if that means Wizards made less money.

Actually, they've made much less money with 4th edition if you focus solely on book sales, as Pathfinder has beaten them out many times, especially since 2010. However, we don't know how much the D&DI had helped stabilize WotC's business model.

Quote from: SteerpikeI think a few of the more successful ones these days - Fate/Fudge, GURPS, even d20 in its various iterations - have started averting this pretty hard.

For everyone like that there are games like Legend of the Five Rings, Dragon Age, Shadow Run, etc. In your list, you could definitely add Savage Worlds (love that system).

Quote from: SteerpikeYeah, still not buying it.  If that was the case why can you use a second-but-different Encounter power but not the same one again?  And even so, the whole idea is a bit silly.  I agree with HD - why not make it a skill roll?  Or, you know, a Combat Maneuver check.

Like I said, I don't really buy it either (doubly so for Daily powers).

Star Wars Saga has proven skill based attacks really require a fundamental re-design of the system to be balanced. It could definitely work but the whole system needs to be designed with that in mind.

Quote from: SteerpikeDefinitely, this is the problem.  My only solutions, really, are multi-classing and prestige classes, which isn't a great solution.  But I prefer Monks, Paladins, Rangers, and Barbarians anyway.

If I had my way, I would actually co-opt the Psionics mechanics, where by Martial Classes only have at-wills. They can use their pool of Martial Points to buff their attacks or make their attacks have additional effects.

I have never liked Multiclassing in 3.x because it always seems to wind up degenerating into cherry picking. The way some people multiclass in 3.x just makes me think they should switch to a different game where one can simply buy the abilities they want rather than having to go through the difficult task of creating a complex build.

Quote from: SteerpikeI think this is actually sort of the reverse of what happened.  As I understand it, the whole reason Pazio started putting out Pathfinder is because, with the advent of 4th edition, Wizards canceled Dungeon and Dragon (which used to be pretty much all Pazio did) and made the game closed.  Pathfinder was a response to 4th edition being closed and restricted, not a cause.

I don't mean Pathfinder was the cause of the issue, rather it exemplifies what was wrong with the OGL from WotC's perspective. They wanted other companies to create campaign settings, adventures and supplements to D&D. They didn't want third party to create their own independent games. Creating independent games (which Paizo was far from the first to do) is what caused the over reaction against third party companies when 4th edition was released.  

Paizo was foolish to focus so heavily on a single licensed property. They should have diversified before the cancellation. To be fair, WotC did not just pull the rug from under Paizo as they granted Paizo a few extra months of publishing to finish out their last big multi-issue adventure path.

WotC was extraordinarily arrogant with 4th edition and they paid a VERY steep price for their arrogance. WotC is really trying to be conciliatory with D&D Next. They have an open play-test and are definitely listening to the public's concerns and criticisms.

Quote from: Elemental_ElfAll of that was given by WotC in spades.

I don't want to derail this too much but I think one of the big problems with 4e is that these goals are worthwhile but none of it actually happened. Here's how I'd break it down:

- Wanted a tighter rule-set: If by "tighter" you mean they eliminated everything about the game except combat, then, sure, they did that, but I don't see that as a particular plus. I mean, they tried to add some noncombat stuff with skill challenges, but skill challenges don't actually work. To compare, I can't really think of any part of the 3e ruleset as major and yet as utterly broken as 4e's skill challenges. (Diplomacy, maybe, but that's still just one skill!)

- Wanted the Fighter and the Rogue to be less replaceable by magic items: Ok, they did this... by basically making all of the classes the same.

- Wanted zero dead levels: The absolute amount of "stuff that you can actually do" doesn't go up nearly as fast in 4e. How often do you end up just paying the feat tax? In reality, you're gaining less power over 30 levels in 4e than you gained over 20 in 3e. There are a ton of dead levels in that sense.

- Wanted magic items to be standard: What do you mean by "standard"? Do you mean how magic items sort of stopped being these unique, special, quirky, crazy things, and were reduced to just "+1 sword" that you immediately throw in the trash when you find a "+2 sword"? This was already a problem in 3e and it only got worse.

- Wanted less assumed power for the DM: When I read this phrase, I think of adding "narrativist" mechanics or other things to increase player empowerment. 4e doesn't do anything like that, so I'm not sure what the actual goal was-- if it was "less DM fiat," this did not happen, because so much of the game that isn't combat is just left up to DM fiat.

- Wanted monsters to feel more exciting: How? 4e combat is grindy and monster powers aren't really all that interesting.

- Wanted the game to be more pick up and go: 4e still has a pile of rules and still requires a decent amount of system mastery to build an optimal character. It also has gigantic lists of powers to navigate where in 3e if you want to "pick up and go" you can just be a dumb melee fighter and swing your axe at things.

- Wanted a tighter rule-set: If by "tighter" you mean they eliminated everything about the game except combat, then, sure, they did that, but I don't see that as a particular plus. I mean, they tried to add some noncombat stuff with skill challenges, but skill challenges don't actually work. To compare, I can't really think of any part of the 3e ruleset as major and yet as utterly broken as 4e's skill challenges. (Diplomacy, maybe, but that's still just one skill!)

Why do you need rules for roleplaying? I've never really had a problem with Skill Challenges work fine. What do you consider broken about them?

- Wanted the Fighter and the Rogue to be less replaceable by magic items: Ok, they did this... by basically making all of the classes the same.

Similarity breeds equality. It's definitely one way of making everything balanced.

- Wanted zero dead levels: The absolute amount of "stuff that you can actually do" doesn't go up nearly as fast in 4e. How often do you end up just paying the feat tax? In reality, you're gaining less power over 30 levels in 4e than you gained over 20 in 3e. There are a ton of dead levels in that sense.

Technically the Feat Tax isn't an issue. It only comes up because the designers actually laid the mechanics of the system bare and people realized player characters needed an extra +1 to keep up with Monster AC/Defenses. The same holds true in many ways to 3.x. If you don't take weapon focus or the spell equivalent you'll lag behind as you level up (especially if magic items are less common).

- Wanted magic items to be standard: What do you mean by "standard"? Do you mean how magic items sort of stopped being these unique, special, quirky, crazy things, and were reduced to just "+1 sword" that you immediately throw in the trash when you find a "+2 sword"? This was already a problem in 3e and it only got worse.

Player Empowerment, mostly. Players wanted the game's assumption to be that Magic Items were common, necessary and assumed for character advancement. Unlike 3.x where Magic Items were the complete purview of DM. This is exemplified by the fact that Magic Items were in the PHB rather than the DMG.

- Wanted less assumed power for the DM: When I read this phrase, I think of adding "narrativist" mechanics or other things to increase player empowerment. 4e doesn't do anything like that, so I'm not sure what the actual goal was-- if it was "less DM fiat," this did not happen, because so much of the game that isn't combat is just left up to DM fiat.

Player empowerment. They wanted the game to assume the relationship between DM and player was tipped far more in the player's hands than the DM's. Magic items were a core concept that players were assumed to be able to purchase in towns, DM's were discouraged from using excessive house rules, DMs were pushed to allow everything (classes, races, magic items, etc.)  because "everything is core". There were no role playing requirements for any class abilities or any class. The game wound up being so much DM fiat because WotC listened to the forum goers and didn't emphasize story, roleplaying or world in any of their non-campaign setting products. By de-emphasizing those, WotC created an envirtonment where DMs wound up with more power via Fiat than they had in 3.x.

- Wanted monsters to feel more exciting: How? 4e combat is grindy and monster powers aren't really all that interesting.

Monsters in 3.x are very, very bland. It takes the DM to make them exciting through role playing. 4E is different in that every monster has exciting powers. However, you are right in that 4E's Wargame style combat made what would have been exciting powers seem rather bland.

I've actually used 4E monster manuals in my 3.x games and its stunning how much excitement they add to the game over the normal monsters.


- Wanted the game to be more pick up and go: 4e still has a pile of rules and still requires a decent amount of system mastery to build an optimal character. It also has gigantic lists of powers to navigate where in 3e if you want to "pick up and go" you can just be a dumb melee fighter and swing your axe at things.

If you know how to play the game and you use WotC's character creator, you can start playing in less than 15 minutes (for a mid-heroic tier character), doubly so since every class works exactly the same. If I had never played a Wizard before, it would take me a long time to build one in 3.x where as it would take roughly the same amount of time as any other character in 4E. If you're going to get into rules bloat, then both 4E and 3.x suffer from that but the pain is mitigated by the Character Creator, which WotC pushes every group to use (made almost necessary due to mountains of errata found in 4E (which is something I absolutely hate)).

Quote from: Elemental ElfSimilarity breeds equality. It's definitely one way of making everything balanced.

As a fan of 3.X/Pathfinder over 4E, this is exactly the approach that turns me off the edition so much - balance hrough homogeneity, at the cost of diversity.

QuoteMonsters in 3.x are very, very bland.

I disagree.  Some are bland, but most of the boring humanoids can be made more exciting and challenging with class levels, feats, spels, magic items, and templates.

Here are a few examples of very un-bland 3.X Monsters:

Ettercap (http://www.d20pfsrd.com/bestiary/monster-listings/aberrations/ettercap): a monster that can climb, be stealthy, sets traps, throw webs, use poison, and synergize with other monsters (lesser spiders).  A tribe of these things - maybe some with Rogue or Ranger levels - could be a force to be reckoned with.

Gibbering Mouther (http://www.d20pfsrd.com/bestiary/monster-listings/aberrations/gibbering-mouther): It has some very unique and interesting abilities- a sonic-based confusion effect that can be countered through interesting spells and equipment (Silence, ear-plugs, etc), ground manipulation can alter the terrain mid-combat, its special "once every 1-4 rounds" acid attack that can blind foes, its creeping engulf and blood-drain thing, and its horrifying ability to ooze through tight spaces.  And it can swim.  And see 360 degrees.  Truly terrifying.

Devourer (http://www.d20pfsrd.com/bestiary/monster-listings/undead/devourer): It runs on souls that fuel its powers - a truly unique mechanic.  It can slay you with a touch, use your soul to curse your allies, and then raise your body as a zombie.  With telepathy, a high intelligence, and an array of social and knowledge skills, it could make an interesting role-playing encounter, and a brilliant villain/boss monster.  There are interesting variants of the creature depending on its origins.

Vrock (http://www.d20pfsrd.com/bestiary/monster-listings/outsiders/demon/vrock): A monster whose special power is a crazy dance.  It infects you with evil spores, stuns you with its screech, can fly, and requires specially good-aligned weapons to wound.

Barghest (http://www.d20pfsrd.com/bestiary/monster-listings/outsiders/barghest): Can shape-change, feed to get more powerful, has a range of spells at its disposal, and has interesting relationships with other monsters.  Multiple stages to its life cycle.  Add Barbarian levels for real scary.  Its mechanics instantly inspire adventure ideas: a Barghest is preying on a small village.  Can the characters stop it before it gets 4 growth points and becomes a Greater Barghest?

I dunno, I think all of these are pretty weird and unusual.  Calling any of them bland would be a major stretch; all of those monsters can do something different in different rounds of combat, all have unique powers and mechanics, many can be tweaked and modified in some way.  If these creatures come off as bland in play, the GM is not doing their job.  I'm not saying every monster in 3.X was brilliant, but you can't tar them all by the same brush.

Quote from: SteerpikeThis is a bit off-topic, but Xeviat, I'm curious - what do you think of fantasy RPG alternatives like GURPS, Burning Wheel, or "OSR" retroclones like Castles & Crusades, Labyrinth Lord, or Lamentations of the Flame Princess?

I haven't played any retroclones. The only thing close to another fantasy RPG I've played was L5R; I didn't like it's lack of a challenge level system and had constant arguements with the GM (out of the game) about things he threw at us being impossible (and we only won because he'd throw us bones during the fight). Likely, he was using the system for the wrong thing (combat over court?).

Quote from: SteerpikeReally, I'm wondering what your overriding design philosophy and system goals are.  What kind of game are you envisioning, and what do you want your 4E hack to accomplish, in broad terms?  How do you want the game to play, to feel?  I don't mean like "I want a hybrid of 3.5 and 4th edition," I mean like "I want a game of epic heroism where the characters are larger than life," or "I want a game of gloom and medieval darkness where the players must claw their way up from nothing," or "I want a highly immersive game, one invested with a sense of realism and grit," or "I want a very light, casual game that's fundamentally about tactical challenges."

I want a game of epic heroism. I want a game that runs the gamut from "small town hero" all the way up to "Heracles and then some". I want a system where my players can do anything they want, but where that "anything" is simply codified within the rules I (as the DM) don't have to feel like I'm playing favorites or being unfair. I want combat to be tactical and challenging. I want exploration and interaction to be immersive and challenging.

Quote from: SteerpikeI ask because with your approach so far, I think I get a sense of what you want to accomplish, but I want to know more about why, beyond simply pleasing players.  At the end of the day, what kind or style of game is the system in service of?  I tend to think that there's no platonic ideal for gaming systems, but that different systems suit different games.

The why is rather simple: I like having a game that I can muck with. I don't get to run games as often as I like, but setting them up is just as much fun for me. Interestingly, I liked running 4E games more than I liked running 3E games, but I liked setting up 3E games more than I liked setting up 4E games.



sparkletwist, I think you're being dramatically unfair to D&D4E. Your dislike of the system shows through in every single word you say. I disagree with you almost entirely; this doesn't mean you're wrong, but it does stress the fact that our opinions are opinions.

Quote from: sparkletwist- Wanted a tighter rule-set: If by "tighter" you mean they eliminated everything about the game except combat, then, sure, they did that, but I don't see that as a particular plus. I mean, they tried to add some noncombat stuff with skill challenges, but skill challenges don't actually work. To compare, I can't really think of any part of the 3e ruleset as major and yet as utterly broken as 4e's skill challenges. (Diplomacy, maybe, but that's still just one skill!)

How did they eliminate everything except combat? They put a lot of emphasis on combat, because that part of the game requires more adjudication, but there's the same kind of noncombat things in 4E as there is in 3E (just perhaps in lower concentration, mainly since they didn't set out to recreate everything in the 3E PHB in the first 4E PHB, something I disagreed with). What's non-combat about 3E? Spells?; most of those became rituals. Skills? Yup, still there. Magic items? Things like magic carpets?

Now, you'll get my agreement that the Skill Challenge system was borked. I loved the concept; the math didn't work right in its first iteration. It's sad, really, as they should have seen this if they had just shown it to us on the boards from the get-go; the statisticians IDed the problem within weeks. They fixed the math in the DMG2 and future versions. The only other flaw with it is that people took it to be a game mechanic rather than a narrative aid. What makes for a more exciting scene? The bard walks up to the guard and tells a lie to get in, makes a single check, and the guard lets him in? Or the bard walks up to the guard and spins an elaborate tale, making several checks and reacting to things the guard does or says, and the guard lets him in? 4E's skill challenges grew directly from the Complex Skill Checks in Unearthed Arcana.

Quote from: sparkletwist- Wanted the Fighter and the Rogue to be less replaceable by magic items: Ok, they did this... by basically making all of the classes the same.

Samey; everyone complained about this. Did anyone used to complain that the Cleric and the Wizard were the same? Now, I do see this as an issue; it is something I've IDed to change, but I think the issue is more about feel and presentation than it is about being an actual problem.

Quote from: sparkletwist- Wanted zero dead levels: The absolute amount of "stuff that you can actually do" doesn't go up nearly as fast in 4e. How often do you end up just paying the feat tax? In reality, you're gaining less power over 30 levels in 4e than you gained over 20 in 3e. There are a ton of dead levels in that sense.

I'm not really sure. We'd have to have a build off.

Quote from: sparkletwist- Wanted magic items to be standard: What do you mean by "standard"? Do you mean how magic items sort of stopped being these unique, special, quirky, crazy things, and were reduced to just "+1 sword" that you immediately throw in the trash when you find a "+2 sword"? This was already a problem in 3e and it only got worse.

What he means is that there were tighter assumptions on what magic items people would have. 3E had gold by level, but that could be all over the place. Someone could spend all their gold on a magic weapon and that's it; they'd be horrendously out of balance. An OCD person like me could make a chart investing the majority of their character wealth into a magic weapon, magic armor, deflection item, natural armor item, energy resistance items, and stat up items, carefully chosen to maximize plusses while not overspending (this was the only way I could generate high enough ACs to stand up to dragons, outsiders, and fellow fighters).

4E made these progressions standard. Everyone was assumed to get a magic weapon, armor, and neck item, and the plusses were assumed to be in the level/5 (rounded up) area (1-5, +1; 6-10, +2 ...) The game technically worked if you only had these three items. Yes, you needed to upgrade them at the first opportunity, but pretending that you didn't need to do that in 3E can only be done because the system wasn't upfront about it's mathematical assumptions. Was that the problem? Did 4E show us the man behind the curtain?

Quote from: sparkletwist- Wanted less assumed power for the DM: When I read this phrase, I think of adding "narrativist" mechanics or other things to increase player empowerment. 4e doesn't do anything like that, so I'm not sure what the actual goal was-- if it was "less DM fiat," this did not happen, because so much of the game that isn't combat is just left up to DM fiat.

I think what he meant was that there was less "DM may I?" You wanted to do a cool thing as a fighter, here are your powers to pick from (there was still improvising, humorously detailed on page 42 of the DMG; I'll never forget that, just like I'll never forget that the Expanded Psionics Handbook printed the Deja Vu power twice). You wanted a particular magic item? Just put it on your wishlist (the DMG instructed DMs to give the players the items they wanted, within the bounds of the item progressions, rather than saying no). Heck, the DMG and all of the other DM materials taught DMs to "Say Yes", something sorely lacking from other versions of D&D (not spoken from familiarity with all of the other DM books, but spoken from familiarity with groggy DMs who go on and on about their way or the highway and about "teaching players" how to "play right").

Quote from: sparkletwist- Wanted monsters to feel more exciting: How? 4e combat is grindy and monster powers aren't really all that interesting.

I'll come back to this one.

Quote from: sparkletwist- Wanted the game to be more pick up and go: 4e still has a pile of rules and still requires a decent amount of system mastery to build an optimal character. It also has gigantic lists of powers to navigate where in 3e if you want to "pick up and go" you can just be a dumb melee fighter and swing your axe at things.

Here's an area we'll both agree and disagree.

My wife loves playing D&D with me. We met playing D&D; I was her first DM. She and I both started playing during 3E; she didn't get in until 3.5. She liked making characters; she didn't like building characters. I'd have to set up her items when we played at a higher level (one game started at 3, my defacto starting point for 3E after running my first game from 1 to 15; another game she jumped into at 11). She'd tell me what she wanted to do, and I'd construct the character to fulfil that vision. Interestingly enough, once the game started going, she was one of the more tactically minded players at the table; I was very confused that she never wanted to play a leader-type (and didn't enjoy it when she did).

During 4E's reign at our house, she came to me excited one day after work. She took a PHB with her and built her character entirely by herself; she even picked her magic items. All she wanted me to do was make sure she did all the math properly and got the right numbers. She thought it was a much bigger deal than I thought it was. It was a Sorcerer too, and she had never touched spellcasters at all during our years of playing 3E.

You cannot make a "dumb fighter who just hits things" in 3E past 1st level; I'd argue that you can't even do it at 1st level. A 1st level human fighter in 3E has to choose 3 feats; a 1st level human fighter in 4E has to choose 2 feats, 3 at-will powers, 1 encounter power, and 1 daily power, so 4E has a smidge double the choices. 3E isn't lacking choices, though. Worse, 3E has trap choices; that fighter could spend their feats on skill focus: craft (basket weaving) perform (woodwinds), and toughness. Yay, they'll get to feel like they've made the character the envisioned, all while sucking at the table. They might not notice it at first, but when the half-orc barbarian is power-attacking his way through prone targets, the fighter player may start to feel ineffective.

This is spoken from experience, only the player was playing a Ranger who spent their first feat on Weapon Finesse (Shortsword). Where the Barbarian was dealing 1d12+6 damage, he was dealing 2d6 damage with a -2 penalty to attack; oh, if it was against a goblin, he did 2d6+2 with a -2 penalty to attack ...

Now, quickly back to monsters: Lets compare a Hobgoblin Warrior from both editions, just to illustrate my point.

Hobgoblin	1st-Level Warrior
Size/Type:	Medium Humanoid (Goblinoid)
Hit Dice:	1d8+2 (6 hp)
Initiative:	+1
Speed:	30 ft. (6 squares)
Armor Class:	15 (+1 Dex, +3 studded leather, +1 light shield), touch 11, flat-footed 14
Base Attack/Grapple:	+1/+2
Attack:	Longsword +2 melee (1d8+1/19-20) or javelin +2 ranged (1d6+1)
Full Attack:	Longsword +2 melee (1d8+1/19-20) or javelin +2 ranged (1d6+1)
Space/Reach:	5 ft./5 ft.
Special Attacks:	—
Special Qualities:	Darkvision 60 ft.
Saves:	Fort +4, Ref +1, Will -1
Abilities:	Str 13, Dex 13, Con 14, Int 10, Wis 9, Cha 8
Skills:	Hide +3, Listen +2, Move Silently +3, Spot +2
Feats:	Alertness
Equiptment:	Studden Leather, Light Shield, Longsword, Javelin (4)

Hobgoblin Soldier	Level 3 Soldier
Medium natural humanoid (goblin)	XP 150
HP 47; Bloodied 24	Initiative +7
AC 20; Fortitude 18; Reflex 16; Will 16	Perception +3
Speed 5	Low-Light Vision

Traits
Phalanx Soldier
The hobgoblin soldier gains a +2 bonus to AC while at least one hobgoblin ally is adjacent to it.

Standard Actions
Flail (weapon) • At-Will
Attack: +7 vs. AC
Hit: 1d10 + 4 damage, the target is slowed until the end of the hobgoblin soldier's next turn, and the target is marked until the end of the hobgoblin soldier's next turn.

Formation Strike (weapon) • At-Will
Attack: +7 vs. AC
Hit: 1d10 + 4 damage, and the hobgoblin soldier shifts 1 square provided it ends in a space adjacent to another hobgoblin.

Triggered Actions
Hobgoblin Resilience • Encounter
Effect (Immediate Reaction): The hobgoblin soldier makes a saving throw against the triggering effect.

Skills Athletics +10, History +8
Str 19 (+5)   Dex 14 (+3)   Wis 14 (+3)
Con 15 (+3)   Int 11 (+1)   Cha 10 (+1)
Alignment evil     Languages Common, Goblin
Equipment scale armor, heavy shield, flail

Now, the 4E hobgoblin has 4 special things it can do. It gets an AC bonus when next to another hobgoblin. It can draw fire or at least protect its allies. It can move around after an attack while ignoring OAs (without using movement to take a 5-foot step, which lost its free status in 4E). Last, they are resilient and can shake off a condition easier than others.

The 3E hobgoblin has ... well it can hit things. Oh, you can give it potions and magic items and select a different feat instead of Alertness ... but you can do the same things in 4E if you want to make a creature more dynamic.

As for the stats themselves, lets just look at HP. The 3E Hobgoblin is a level 1 threat (CR 1/2, you can fight two in a "fair fight" at level 1). It has 6 hp. A typical fighter will be dealing 1d8+ ... lets say 3 (16 Str) at first level. Average damage is 7.5. Woops, looks like the hobo goes down in 1 hit 66% of the time. Good game.

The 4E Hobgoblin is a level 3 threat (you can fight up to 5 of them in a "fair fight" at level 3). It has 47 hp. A typical fighter will be dealing 1d8+5 at that level. Average damage is 9.5. The hobo can take 5 of those hits before going down (modified since the fighter has 2 encounter powers at this point, probably dealing 2d8+5 damage, and might feel the need to use their daily for 3d8+5 ... maybe an action point for an extra attack ...).

My point is, where someone might say that 5 hits (so 8 rounds or so considering the 65% hit chance or so) is a slog, I say it's a dynamic fight. There's time for stuff to happen, time for interesting choices to be made. Time for something other than the wizard dropping a single spell or the fighter swinging their sword once and calling it a fight.


Was 4E a perfect system? No; I found errors in it from month 2 (things that were subsequently patched with feats rather than actually fixed). I only noticed these errors because the game was very upfront with its math (since it showed us what was expected of monsters). Perhaps that was a mistake on their part?

Quote from: SteerpikeI disagree.  Some are bland, but most of the boring humanoids can be made more exciting and challenging with class levels, feats, spels, magic items, and templates.

I dunno, I think all of these are pretty weird and unusual.  Calling any of them bland would be a major stretch; all of those monsters can do something different in different rounds of combat, all have unique powers and mechanics, many can be tweaked and modified in some way.  If these creatures come off as bland in play, the GM is not doing their job.  I'm not saying every monster in 3.X was brilliant, but you can't tar them all by the same brush.

Most of those monsters exist in 4E too. They're easier to run, since you don't have to deal with spell lists or "summon fiend" chances. Templates and themes exist for add-on based customization, and the math of the system is laid bare so true customization is far easier in 4E than in 3E.

So far, I've only responded to the OP. I'll come back for more later.

Quote from: Xeviat
As a fan of 4th Edition D&D, it is difficult for me to understand what some fans of 3E didn't like about it. Was it simply a resistance to change? Was it something superficial, such as a dislike of certain terms? Was it a dislike of a perceived "sameiness" between different characters? Was it a dislike of rigid powers, or even the use of powers by non-magical characters? Was it anger at having one's favorite class reduced in power?

First and foremost, this is probably not the question to ask yourself as a designer. What a nebulous group of people want out of a game isn't going to give you much clarity in your goals down the road. And it's a messy and complicated question that is only partially concerned with any mechanical design. As you note yourself, there are external factors like how much of the previous line people collected (and wanted to get some more use out of) alongside weird questions of fluff (just calling certain things "powers" bothers people). That isn't to say that there weren't specific design issues, but the issue will be confused by these externalities.

It may be best to select a set of design goals for your RPG without much regard for audience. Or if you are going to concern yourself with your audience, you may want to pick a specific player base and cater to them rather than try and please groups with incompatible goals. For a proper D&D, considerations of where the mainstream lies are valid. But the truth is nobody here is likely to make anything that big, especially in a niche already dominated by WotC and Paizo.

QuoteBecause I cannot sit still, I want to work on my own version of D&D before I move on to making my own system; my RPG style suits D&D, and I don't feel like moving on to a different kind of system. But as I like to live in a land of hopes and dreams, I want to make a system that can appeal to fans of 3E and 4E alike. In order to do that, I need to understand the differences, and similarities, between the two systems better. I need to understand what 4E's opponents dislike about the system.

Again, this is a weird question to be asking. There are very different types of "opponents" for 4e. If you ask about 4e's problems at theRPGsite, 4chan's /tg/, and The Gaming Den, you will get three very different kinds of answers. And there's a heavy contingent of 3x and PF players at all three sites.

QuoteFirst and foremost, I think the largest of the strong complaints about 4E come from a large difference between it and 3E. 3E, partially, strived to be a simulationist game. There were rules for everything, and everything used the same basic system. Monsters and PCs were built on the same structure, monsters and PCs used the same spells and feats. There were even rules to create every person in a settlement, no matter the size. 4E, on the contrary, knew it was a game on the surface. It told DMs to just make things up and not worry about the rules for many elements of the game. Monsters are built to be challenges for your PCs. Cities are filled with whoever you want to fill them with. The blacksmith is a human who smiths, not a level 8 human expert with 11 ranks of craft (weapons) and craft (armor).

The meme that 3e is a simulationist game is a pretty recent one. Really, no one would have made the claim while the term was still relatively current (while GDS and/or GNS were still pretty popular) as there are much much better games for scratching that particular itch. HERO, Runequest, and GURPS all spring to mind. I mentioned that there are multiple kinds of people who have problems with 4e, and here's where the chatter on The Gaming Den might become relevant. They have a few threads and discussions both on the ridiculously unrealistic results of some of 3.x's rules when applied, and on how 4e often fails to do what it should as a game.

3e used the same rules for monsters, PCs, and NPCs as part of a drive towards unification. It's the same logic that drove things towards d20-roll-high across the board. This isn't really the same thing as simulation and doesn't really simulate anything in particular. In the general sense 4e shares this trait, though the two games sort of apply it differently. 4e filters its mechanics through the assumed uses of those mechanics in a way that 3x doesn't necessarily do. And this isn't necessarily a bad thing either, if the rules still feel complete. I can't really speak to whether they do, as I don't really run or play 4e much, but this is basically how I would describe the difference.

QuoteAnother large difference between 3E and 4E is the way leveling characters works. In 4E, you choose a character class and stick with it through the entire game. At a certain point, you get to choose from specialties (paragon path at 11th, epic destiny at 21st). You could multiclass, granting you a defining class feature in a higher rarity (at-will becomes encounter, encounter becomes daily) and allowing you to trade powers between the two classes. You could dual-class at 1st level, allowing you to grow as two separate classes from the get-go. 3E, on the contrary, allows you to choose your class at each and every level. One could start as a fighter, then after their character finds religion, they could level up as a cleric. With certain prerequisites, characters could even access prestige classes.

Now, prestige classes had flaws of their own. First, were often more powerful than the base classes, creating an arms race. Second, they were trying to fill two different roles; some PrCs represented prestigious organizations or rare specialties, while others existed to patch up weaknesses in the multiclassing system. Even recognizing these flaws, the 3E class system had strengths that were tied to its simulationist angle. A character could grow organically. Your decisions weren't set from level one. Players could customize their characters greatly.

I think this is a weird place to differentiate. 3x seemed to have the edge in flexibility and intuitiveness, but multiclassed casters were severely sub-par and everybody else basically had to cherry-pick extremely carefully to keep up. Neither system works very well in terms of flexibility in the core, which is extremely weird because each has feats or powers that could easily smooth over the dual-concept characters. In either case, the difference isn't what I'd call simulation. A character who went rogue>wizard learned wizarding at a younger age, for example. Or a character who went rogue>fighter had many more skill points than one who went fighter>rogue. Again, not exactly simmy.

QuoteThe third difference I recognize between 3E and 4E is the firm, rigid structure of 4E. While you had choices at each level in 4E, sometimes more frequent choices than existed in 3E, the nature of those choices was always set. At 7th level, you learned a new 1/encounter attack ability, whether you wanted to or not. Now, I'm not certain why anyone wouldn't want to, but I suppose the lack of the ability to choose a non-combat ability, or to have more frequent use of a previous ability or just a stronger version of a previous ability made some players feel restricted. While many classes had these types of restrictions in 3E, they were less restrictive. Sorcerers, for instance, learned new spells at most of their level-ups, but those spells could be offensive, defensive, or utilitarian at the player's discretion.

This is actually a somewhat valid thing to look at. If there are (let's say) four powers you could learn in two levels, and you could pick any power at either of those two levels, there are six possible combinations at level two. If there were a "level one" category and a "level two" category and you could only pick one of each, you're down to four. The more powers there are, the bigger the impact such categorization can have. You start to need many times the volume of powers that you would otherwise need to offer a similar number of options overall.

I think either approach can be made to work, but for homebrewing it is much MUCH easier to restrict things less within a smaller pool.

QuoteAll of these differences are large, system-wide differences. But what about the differences between the core mechanics? I already addressed leveling. The next largest system difference is the skill system. In 3E, characters gained skill points at every level, based on the class they leveled and their intelligence bonus; in 4E, characters started with a number of skills at 1st level and didn't regularly gain more skills. On the surface, these two systems seem to be very different. In practice, a 3E character who does not multiclass could select their max number of skills and simply raise them to max at each level; this will produce similar numbers as a 4E character who selects the same skills at first level.

There is IIRC the other difference, which is that a 4e character has a level-based bonus even to untrained skills.

In 3x, there is a difference between a guy who maxed out three skills and a guy who put three ranks in every skill. Scarcity does present new options. Personally I prefer the 4e approach to skill training, since it provides more options *in play* as opposed to *through character building* which has become a lower priority for me.

QuotePerhaps this is, again, the illusion of choice. Technically speaking, DCs did not raise as you gained levels in 3E, but they did in practice. Higher CR traps had higher DCs to locate and disarm. Higher CR opponents had higher skills opposed to player skills. The fantastic challenges one would expect to encounter at higher levels had higher DCs, such as breaking down unbreakable adamantine doors or running across oil-slicked wires strung over windy canyons. 4E codified these DCs in an attempt to balance the game, but it presented the DCs by level rather than presenting the challenges by level. Perhaps this was a failing of presentation?

3x sometimes failed to scale difficulty with disastrous effects. Diplomacy is a great example, and possibly game-breaking if abused.

Otherwise, yeah, I'd more or less chalk this up to presentation. Saying that a level x door works a certain way feels weird when compared with saying that an adamantine door does.

QuoteFeats were largely the same, filling the same role in both 3E and 4E. Some class features moved over to feats, but characters gained more feats, so that should balance out. There were some minor functional differences between equipment; for instance, armors in 3E were presented to largely appear balanced against each other, with higher AC armor having lower Max Dex. Some outliers existed, but largely this held true. 4E's armor system had a hierarchy, with hide armor being better than leather armor, and plate armor being better than scale armor (not withstanding armor check penalties, which are a minor inconvenience). I'm not sure how I should interpret this difference, except to recognize that it might make characters feel like they have to upgrade their armor by purchasing armor proficiency feats, rather than sticking with what the designers gave their class.

I don't think this was really one of those things that bugged people very much. I haven't heard much about it, in any case.

QuoteSpells changed drastically between 3E and 4E. This change only affects a portion of the classes, as not everyone fully relied upon spells (out of the 11 core classes of 3E, 4 lacked spells all together, and 2 more hardly used their spells). The half of the classes that relied heavily upon their spells contained the most potent of the 3E classes. Any change to those classes' resources could be perceived as an attack upon them, and thus an attack upon the players who favored them. It is well established that Clerics were more powerful than Fighters in 3E, even when the Cleric was performing the Fighter's own role. Rather than accuse spellcaster fans of disliking 4E because they felt their favorite classes were weakened, I'd like to focus on the differences between the spells.

In 3E, spellcasters gained X spells per day of each spell level. Most could prepare which spells they wanted access to each day, and then they cast from this list; some classes learned a smaller list of spells, but they could mix and match what they cast each day. Those spells could be offensive, defensive, or utilitarian; in a game not focused on combat, a wizard could prepare nothing but utility spells, allowing them to feel like their abilities weren't waisted (whether or not non-spellcasters had this opportunity is lost in this example). In 4E, spellcasters (like all classes) learned offensive and defensive defensive spells at certain levels; utilitarian spells were largely grouped together as "rituals" and siloed separately from class powers. Even if a 3E character who parsed their spells out to be able to make it through 3 to 5 battles in a day had the same amount of abilities as a 4E character did in each fight, we again find ourself in a situation where 3E allowed players to feel like they had more choices.

The fact that non-spellcasters had access to the same structure of abilities seemed to put off some players. Some have said this is due to spellcaster players wanting to be better than non-spellcaster players. The suggestion is that spellcasters are the "hard mode" of the game, requiring greater knowledge of the game and greater preparation, and thus they should be rewarded with greater power. Others may not like the use of the same power stucture for casters and non-casters because it leads to a feeling of sameness. Perhaps there are players out there that prefer simplistic characters who don't have to worry about limited use abilities (though I would argue that even a simplistic Fighter grew into a complicated character in 3E, what with the potential of having 18+ feats by level 20), and these players didn't like Fighters having "powers".

For myself, there were a few problems with the power structure:

Martial daily and encounter powers were just weird. Why can't you attempt a particular move again in the same fight? Fatigue, and people "wising up" to the trick have both been presented as possible explanations, but the rules around the power don't reinforce that impression. Attacking a second enemy in the same encounter, including reinforcements who arrived later, won't work (negating the "wising up" bit). And the fatigue only seems to affect the particular power you used, and not other powers about as strenuous. Another justification I've heard is that these martial powers only get one "window of opportunity" which the martial character takes advantage of. But the player gets to decide when the window of opportunity is open (which is potentially jarring) and apparently resting is what allows these windows of opportunity to open somehow. I'm sure a martial encounter power can be explained in terms of the setting, but anything that takes that amount of work to explain is more than enough to interrupt suspension of disbelief.

A character couldn't focus on limited or unlimited resources, and powers in a given slot were too comparable. You're basically not going to get a beguiler or a summoning-focused character or a zombie-focused necromancer in 4e. There was a samey-ness to it. Truth is, I could have gotten behind a unified resource management system if the effects were at least a little more variable. Or I could have gotten behind a system of always dealing damage (4e isn't actually *that* far along this axis, but you get the idea), but with some classes managing their resources in drastically different ways. But similarity in both effect and resource management was just a bit much.

Finally, the decision of when to peak was always the most *boring* part of Vance. Choosing *between* offense, defense, utility, etc. was the main draw when there was one. A stance system (as an example) has the latter and not the former. The torches are soaked and you've been ambushed in the dark; you can keep your shield up *or* you can keep your light spell going. That's a difficult and engaging bit of resource management. AEDU was more like keeping the former and ditching the latter. You will use this power once per day, and that power once per day, but what time of day will you use them?

QuoteNow, I have gone on for twelve paragraphs highlighting why I think some players disliked 4E. It could seem that I'm saying 3E was a better game because of these facts, yet I began saying that I'm a fan of 4E. So what were the strengths of 4E? As many other writers have said, 4E's greatest strength was balance. Characters of the same level did similar damage and their bonuses grew at very similar rates. Instead of one class's attack bonus growing at +1 every 2 levels and another class growing at +1 every level (creating gap that grew so wide, the first class might as well never swing a weapon past the first couple of levels), all character's attack bonuses grew at the same +1 every 2 levels rate.

This balance wasn't just numerical in nature. 4E also balanced opportunity. Non-spellcasters could do cool things, just like spellcasters. Where the wizard could drop a fireball on a formation of enemy soldiers, a fighter could charge into the group and make a series of attacks upon all of them. In combat, everyone could contribute. No body felt left out in a 4E fight. Gone were the days of the fighter playing lineman while the wizard played quarterback, where everyone supported and relied upon the spellcasters and where the spellcasters could replace every other character (why play a traditional group including a Cleric, Fighter, Rogue, and Wizard, when a combat Wizard, a utility Wizard, a melee Cleric and a caster Cleric did the job better?).

And here's where you might be well served by looking to fans of older editions for advice. In many cases, casters got massive boosts and fighters got massive nerfs in the edition transition. Old editions managed somewhat better parity while keeping the resource management angle more diverse between classes. I can get more into the entirely different set of solutions that can provide later, if you like.

Quote4E was also easier to run, at least from my experience. The strengths and abilities of the players was reasonably quantified, and the Challenge Level system was better balanced than 3E's Challenge Rating system. One didn't need to be a master of the system to run it, as so much of it was spelled out for new DMs. Monsters were more interesting to run; even the lowly goblin and kobold had interesting monster abilities. Increasing the power of monsters was as easy as consulting one chart, rather than going through the arcane system of adding hit dice or class levels and upgrading equipment. The existence of minion, elite, and solo monsters created variety in encounter design, and the fact that the basic assumption of the game shifted from 4 players vs 1 monster to 5 players vs 5 monsters made combat more dynamic. The nature of powers also made combat more tactical, as did the definition and quantification of player and monster roles.

Again, not wanting to commit egregious acts of ad hominem, I suspect some of the dislike of 4E stems from an elitist attitude towards 3E and gaming in general. 4E was easier to DM, thus its opponents called it a simpler game. 4E made characters more balanced, and thus they were all the same. 4E gave cool toys to non-spellcasters, and thus they were taking away the toys of spellcasters. 4E spelled quantified powers, and thus made it impossible for players to be "smarter" than their DMs. 4E made it harder to make a purposefully weak character, and thus it was stifling a roleplayer's ability to make the characters they envisioned. Games that reward system mastery and player skill have their place, but perhaps that place is not in a cooperative roleplaying game?

Again, a good place where talking to the older 3x fans may give you perspective. 4e isn't exactly the last word on rules-light and casual gaming. Movement in this direction is actually pretty popular in other circles, such as the OSR crowd and Storygames fan.

3x was extraordinarily prep heavy. It's one of the major flaws and basically the one thing I like least about it, and I'm not alone. Accessibility is one of the major gripes about the system among its fans.

QuoteClasses and leveling: Characters would need to choose a class upon each level up. This system allows for players to feel like their characters are growing organically.

If you want 100% flexibility, just let people train some skills and such at level 1 and pick new feats/powers as they level up from a single pool.
You can easily restrict feat/powers lists based on archetypes from there. For example, there may be a class list and a general list. Or a class list, race list, and general list. Or characters could pick three classes and pull from any of the three lists (so you could have an undead elf mage or a dwarf fighter tinker or what have you).
You could also delimit the 4e approach, and let people borrow off other lists in exchange for some minor form of penalty.
The 3x system has very little to recommend it vs any of these approaches.

QuoteSkills: Skills would need to improve as a character gains levels, and by choice, not automatically. Automatic advancement of skills, even when there are outside options to improve them further still, seems to dissolve verisimilitude.

I can take or leave free advancement in untrained stuff. But the binary approach just feels more D&D to me than the proper point buy.

QuoteSpells: Offensive and Defensive spells will need to be reconstituted in the same pool. Different classes will need to access the same spell list, though with minor differences, rather than having their own fully unique spell lists.

Allowing a blast to be a blast whoever's casting it is cool, and probably the easiest approach for a homebrew.

QuoteNPCs and Monsters: NPCs and Monsters will need to be built on a similar chassis as players. NPCs need to be able to be built with stats, from the lowly commoner to the most regal king. Monsters need to use the same spells and abilities as players.

From what I've seen this isn't really a major point of contention. I'd advise just making the number of relevant stats small and easy to figure based on a character's type and level. Minimizing the need for pre-statting could be super helpful.
[/quote]

Quote from: XeviatMost of those monsters exist in 4E too. They're easier to run, since you don't have to deal with spell lists or "summon fiend" chances. Templates and themes exist for add-on based customization, and the math of the system is laid bare so true customization is far easier in 4E than in 3E.

Though I don't like the different "chassis" or presentation styles for monsters vs. characters in 4E, I actually don't hate 4E monsters at all; in some ways I think they're one of the few things 4E does better than 3.X, emphasis in "some ways" (I don't like my Hobgoblins to require 5 hits, for example, and I definitely don't like most of the monster art for 4E, with some exceptions).  Giving monsters unique abilities is always good, and 4E tends to do this, to its credit.  My statement wasn't intended to bash 4E at all, it was to defend 3.X from Elemental Elf's statement that its monsters were "very, very bland" - this simply isn't true for many 3.X monsters.

Quote from: xeviatMy point is, where someone might say that 5 hits (so 8 rounds or so considering the 65% hit chance or so) is a slog, I say it's a dynamic fight. There's time for stuff to happen, time for interesting choices to be made. Time for something other than the wizard dropping a single spell or the fighter swinging their sword once and calling it a fight.

8 rounds with 4 people is already 32 turns. When I run, I'll often be running for 11. If 4e goes all combat, it does it for an entirely different reason than other people usually give: It's hard as shit to get two or three combats finished in a three hour session. At least IME.

What's worse is that I really don't feel like much about the fight matters after the fact. KOs and death were too infrequent for me, even in the 4e version of TOH. And without KOs or death there's not as much of a significant dent the game can leave after the fact. Resting adequately will restore nearly everything that matters, and there are no wounds or anything of the like.

Finally, the pushing and pulling and numbers and picking when to peak didn't feel like a significant decision.

I like tactical combat, but I want it to hit harder. I'd like a one fight-session (without a 3x caster nova) if the fight was a lot shorter. I'd like the concept of a feat taken up to 11, but didn't like the blandness. I was tired of fixing 3.5. I was THE guy 4e seemed to be for, and it left me really extremely nonplussed. To the point where I wouldn't play until a few years after it was released, and still probably wouldn't run it.

Most of that's just me though.

I think one thing that people who like 4E really care about that doesn't really bother me is the whole monsters/pcs/treasure scaling issue, which feeds into the entire obsession with balance that kind of puzzles me.  Like, when I DM, I do not always pick challenges that are "appropriate" to my characters at all, and I reward treasure as I feel like it (or, really, more in ways that make sense in-universe), not in accordance with a chart.

I use the Challenge Ratings as the roughest guidelines.  I routinely throw monsters at players that are much higher in CR than they're supposed to take, and I routinely throw easier challenges at them when it makes sense in-setting.  Like, if my 8th level players in my Planescape game decide to go to Baator and start kicking ass and taking names, they're going to get eaten by Pit Fiends.  Likewise if they decide to muck out the tavern-keeper's cellars they're only going to encounter the odd cranium rat.

The same applies to treasure.  If they decide they want to burglarize the Temple of the Abyss in the Lady's Ward then if they manage to somehow trick their way past the high-level evil Clerics (mug some acolytes, use a few Alter Self spells to take their places, reserarch some rituals to fit in...) and pickpocket a key or something, they might be able to get their hands on something like an Unholy Staff (http://www.d20pfsrd.com/magic-items/staves/unholy-staff) even though it's way more powerful/expensive than their average gold-per-level is supposed to dictate.  But if they just mess around in the Hive fighting low-level thugs they'll probably get small change.

So, to me, monster vs. PC "scaling" isn't really an issue, because I don't follow a scale, really.

I understand that huge disparities between player-power can be annoying, but when each class feels diverse and unique, actual disparities between the amount of damage dealt or whatever are less of a big deal.  Like, even though the party's Ranger/Druid probably didn't calculate all her feats and bonuses to make sure her character was super strong and whatnot, it's OK because whenever we deal with animals or plants and stuff she has her chance to shine.  When the classes start to feel homogenous, ironically even the little imbalanced things are going to stand out more.

EDIT:

So yeah this

Quote from: XeviatWhat he means is that there were tighter assumptions on what magic items people would have. 3E had gold by level, but that could be all over the place. Someone could spend all their gold on a magic weapon and that's it; they'd be horrendously out of balance. An OCD person like me could make a chart investing the majority of their character wealth into a magic weapon, magic armor, deflection item, natural armor item, energy resistance items, and stat up items, carefully chosen to maximize plusses while not overspending (this was the only way I could generate high enough ACs to stand up to dragons, outsiders, and fellow fighters).

4E made these progressions standard. Everyone was assumed to get a magic weapon, armor, and neck item, and the plusses were assumed to be in the level/5 (rounded up) area (1-5, +1; 6-10, +2 ...) The game technically worked if you only had these three items. Yes, you needed to upgrade them at the first opportunity, but pretending that you didn't need to do that in 3E can only be done because the system wasn't upfront about it's mathematical assumptions. Was that the problem? Did 4E show us the man behind the curtain?

is what I don't like, because that's not how I deal with treasure in 3.X - and, as sparkletwist says, this approach is pretty wretched flavour-wise, reducing the sense of wonder of magic items even more than 3.X had a tendency to do (in my 3.X games, there's no such thing as "just a +1 sword," ever).

Not ignoring the rest of your beautiful post, as I mostly agree with it and it's big, I don't want to bore anyone with a line by line response.

Quote from: beejazzFirst and foremost, this is probably not the question to ask yourself as a designer. What a nebulous group of people want out of a game isn't going to give you much clarity in your goals down the road. And it's a messy and complicated question that is only partially concerned with any mechanical design. As you note yourself, there are external factors like how much of the previous line people collected (and wanted to get some more use out of) alongside weird questions of fluff (just calling certain things "powers" bothers people). That isn't to say that there weren't specific design issues, but the issue will be confused by these externalities.

It may be best to select a set of design goals for your RPG without much regard for audience. Or if you are going to concern yourself with your audience, you may want to pick a specific player base and cater to them rather than try and please groups with incompatible goals. For a proper D&D, considerations of where the mainstream lies are valid. But the truth is nobody here is likely to make anything that big, especially in a niche already dominated by WotC and Paizo.

I did want to bring this part up. I'm the audience I'm speaking to with this essay. I love 4E, but something felt off about it. I liked running 4E more than 3E, but I liked homebrewing for 3E more than 4E (Heck, just look at some of my stuff around here and back on the WotC boards; I had my Templar, Savant, and Channeler classes, I had my combat maneuver/called shot system, I had my races ...). I'm not looking to focus group all of the players, I'm wanting to fix the feel for me; I figure that I'm not a unique and special snowflake, and if I like it more, other people will too.

Quote from: Xeviatsparkletwist, I think you're being dramatically unfair to D&D4E. Your dislike of the system shows through in every single word you say. I disagree with you almost entirely; this doesn't mean you're wrong, but it does stress the fact that our opinions are opinions.

Yes, I dislike 4e. Yes, my dislike of 4e is my opinion. However, my opinion is grounded in concrete issues with the system's incoherent logic or bad math that I can point out and express quite clearly. I've barely mentioned purely subjective and unrelated things I don't like, such as disliking being forced to play on a gridmap or thinking the GSL was toxic-- because I was trying to stick to the point. I don't really see how I haven't been fair.

You and EE have both made detailed responses to my critiques, so I'm not sure if I can address them point-by-point, but I will try to reply without generating an out-of-control wall of text.

So. How did they eliminate everything except combat? By eliminating everything except combat. Look at the 4e PHB: one piddly chapter about skills, and the skill system has been reduced to this bare skeleton of "trained or not." And then there's a little six-page chapter called "Adventuring" that is supposed to cover the rest of it. Monsters no longer are living creatures with quirks and behaviors; they are more or less just stat blocks. Spells no longer have out of combat uses at all, except for rituals, and rituals are slow and cost money so whatever. Where are all the little tables listing how much a pound of flour or a donkey costs? Where is the talk of socialization, of politics, of crafting, of doing all those other little things in the world that aren't dungeon delving? Where are the high-minded screeds on alignment... never mind, I don't miss those. But, anyway, where's the fluff, other than this half-baked "points of light" thing?

Anyway, I do want to say, the DMG2 "fix" for skill challenges didn't actually solve anything because they insisted upon keeping their mathematically untenable "get X successes before Y failures" system. The worst part is that they seemed to acknowledge that, yes, it is indeed an issue (although they drastically understated the problem) but then made half-baked suggestions like "include other skill checks that the people who wouldn't participate are the best at." So their solution to the problem that skill challenges are only attempted by whoever is best at the skill is... to artificially introduce more rolls so that everyone gets to be best at something. Instead of actually fixing the defective math at the core of this.

I don't really think a greater amount of transparency in 4e's math is the source of its problems. While I think it's a correct assertion that having the inner works laid bare makes it easy to see the flaws, that also means it's easier to get in there and fix them. The designers of 4e chose not to, by doing things like introducing a feat tax instead of actually fixing weirdly scaling monster power... but I also contend that was only a problem to begin with because they insisted upon having encounter difficulty powering up in lock-step with players in an artificial way. I'm all for trying to create a somewhat balanced game-- I don't like enormous disparity in player/player or player/monster ability because I think it hurts everyone's fun-- but I also think that's going too far and is sort of untenable.

Don't get me wrong. I'm big on player empowerment. I am 100% with you against the DM that wants to "educate" players. "Smart play" is so often just a synonym for "a play style the DM agrees with." However, I think wishlists aren't so much a tool for player empowerment as a symptom of everything wrong with 4th edition. As Xeviat observed, you need a certain amount of magic items to get a certain bonus so that you can keep pace with the treadmill of steadily improving challenges. I counter that there's no organic feel to any of it. In the end, it's all about making the numbers work, and doesn't actually empower the player at all.

So, about fighting hobgoblin warriors. The 4e version gets special things while the 3e version can "just hit things." Largely, this is because 4th edition has no actual consistent rules from one monster to another. They just make up some arbitrary abilities that each monster has and put them in its stat block. For example, it gets an AC bonus because it's next to another hobgoblin... but why? Are hobgoblins interlocking like little nasty lego bricks? Does it have to do with "being a warrior"? The 3e hobgoblin could get this ability, too, if you gave it a feat that said "get an AC bonus when next to other things of your race," and the added bonus to that is, it's actually comprehensible why the bonus occurs and how other people/characters/monsters can get it. You said that you could give the hobgoblin a magic item, but I contend that it's actually not that easy to just drop in items because monster attacks are listed as discrete powers without clear relationships stated as to what affects what or even any consistency between powers of the same name between different monsters. "Evil Eye" is the most infamous but far from the only example of this. To me, this is frustrating and confusing. I completely agree with the basic idea that monsters and players should be built on the same chassis, and that chassis should be consistent and work right.

Anyway. Hopefully I've managed to respond to most of the major points made. :)

Quote from: Xeviat

Quote from: SteerpikeThis is a bit off-topic, but Xeviat, I'm curious - what do you think of fantasy RPG alternatives like GURPS, Burning Wheel, or "OSR" retroclones like Castles & Crusades, Labyrinth Lord, or Lamentations of the Flame Princess?

I haven't played any retroclones. The only thing close to another fantasy RPG I've played was L5R; I didn't like it's lack of a challenge level system and had constant arguements with the GM (out of the game) about things he threw at us being impossible (and we only won because he'd throw us bones during the fight). Likely, he was using the system for the wrong thing (combat over court?).

L5R is an amazing system but it is definitely not heroic fantasy. It has one of the highest lethality of any system I have played. You are never, ever supposed to fight in that game unless you absolutely must. L5R is not a system where you go out into the wilderness and clear out dungeons. You will die if you do. Hell, just walking around outside and getting attacked by bandits usually means you will either die or be horribly wounded. The game has a completely different mentality than D&D. I remember the first time everyone at the table realized this when an Archer in a tree two shot-ed one of the samurai in the party, then proceeded to slay two other characters before, finally, he was flung out of the tree and killed.

L5R is a game where you possess the skills for war but rarely, if ever use them outside of first blood duels and practice. The game instead pushes players to focus on non-combat skills that would seem superfluous in other settings (like playing Go, tea ceremonies, poetry, painting, calligraphy) as well as dialogue/talking based skills.

Quote from: Steerpike
As a fan of 3.X/Pathfinder over 4E, this is exactly the approach that turns me off the edition so much - balance hrough homogeneity, at the cost of diversity.

You and I definitely see Diversity as a strength (I *love* the Unearthed Arcana) but others completely disagree.  It's no difference than 3.5. I know tons of people that loathe 3.x because there are so many different mechanics, many of whom are completely unrelated and often ill-tested. They cite all the weak (Hex Blade, Dragon Shaman, Binder) and useless (True Namer, CoW Samurai, etc.) classes as examples of why diversity isn't always a good thing (especially when you're paying money for these books). 

Quote
I disagree.  Some are bland, but most of the boring humanoids can be made more exciting and challenging with class levels, feats, spels, magic items, and templates.

Here are a few examples of very un-bland 3.X Monsters:

Ettercap (http://www.d20pfsrd.com/bestiary/monster-listings/aberrations/ettercap): a monster that can climb, be stealthy, sets traps, throw webs, use poison, and synergize with other monsters (lesser spiders).  A tribe of these things - maybe some with Rogue or Ranger levels - could be a force to be reckoned with.

Gibbering Mouther (http://www.d20pfsrd.com/bestiary/monster-listings/aberrations/gibbering-mouther): It has some very unique and interesting abilities- a sonic-based confusion effect that can be countered through interesting spells and equipment (Silence, ear-plugs, etc), ground manipulation can alter the terrain mid-combat, its special "once every 1-4 rounds" acid attack that can blind foes, its creeping engulf and blood-drain thing, and its horrifying ability to ooze through tight spaces.  And it can swim.  And see 360 degrees.  Truly terrifying.

Devourer (http://www.d20pfsrd.com/bestiary/monster-listings/undead/devourer): It runs on souls that fuel its powers - a truly unique mechanic.  It can slay you with a touch, use your soul to curse your allies, and then raise your body as a zombie.  With telepathy, a high intelligence, and an array of social and knowledge skills, it could make an interesting role-playing encounter, and a brilliant villain/boss monster.  There are interesting variants of the creature depending on its origins.


I dunno, I think all of these are pretty weird and unusual.  Calling any of them bland would be a major stretch; all of those monsters can do something different in different rounds of combat, all have unique powers and mechanics, many can be tweaked and modified in some way.  If these creatures come off as bland in play, the GM is not doing their job.  I'm not saying every monster in 3.X was brilliant, but you can't tar them all by the same brush.

In my haste to respond, I misspoke. I should re-phrase. What I meant was that most monsters in 3.x were fairly mundane and boring, especially at the lower level. Even the most powerful were generally just a series of spells, skills and high attack values. The best monsters were ones that did something unique. 3.x monsters rely much more heavily on DMs to make them feel scary and unique. Heck, a lot of 3.x monsters are pretty cool but that coolness is often hidden behind those terrible stat blocks (especially in the early days of 3.x). In 4E monsters' special abilities are pumped up and brought to the forefront. I think 3.x was headed in this direction already, and Paizo definitely adapted it to their game. I just feel monsters look and feel better in 4E MM's than the MM's of 3.x. 

What I think 4E really lacked - and it's a crying shame that it does - is all the great background information that accompanies monsters in 3.x and PF. They did this because there was a vocal minority of DM's that decried WotC pushing so much cultural, physiological and environmental information for monsters as both filler (so WotC could pint fewer monsters per book) and WotC's attempt at homogenizing the game. Meaning that those vocal DM's saw that extra information as completely useless for them because they had written their own cultures and motivations for monsters living in their campaign settings. They fervantly opposed WotC's inclusion of fluff in MM's. I agree with those DM's to an extent because some of the fluff in the MM 5 was very, very specific and not entirely useful, especially if your world was more fairly divergant from the assumed setting. Having said that, it was still enjoyable fluff (one of my players fell in love with the Illithids from the MM5). 4E eliminated much of that fluff because a vocal minority demanded it and, in many ways, 4E lost some of the heart that was present in previous editions.

Quote from: Steerpike
I think one thing that people who like 4E really care about that doesn't really bother me is the whole monsters/pcs/treasure scaling issue, which feeds into the entire obsession with balance that kind of puzzles me.  Like, when I DM, I do not always pick challenges that are "appropriate" to my characters at all, and I reward treasure as I feel like it (or, really, more in ways that make sense in-universe), not in accordance with a chart.

I use the Challenge Ratings as the roughest guidelines.  I routinely throw monsters at players that are much higher in CR than they're supposed to take, and I routinely throw easier challenges at them when it makes sense in-setting.  Like, if my 8th level players in my Planescape game decide to go to Baator and start kicking ass and taking names, they're going to get eaten by Pit Fiends.  Likewise if they decide to muck out the tavern-keeper's cellars they're only going to encounter the odd cranium rat.

That feeds back into players and a sense of entitlement that many possessed, especially those that were more influenced by video games than traditional RPGs. They are used to being forced to get new gear as they level up, so not getting new gear feels wrong to them. The appropriate challenge is also a video game thing where people want to be constantly challenged but never face overwhelming opposition. Look at how Bethesda dealt with this issue in Oblivion - every combat was level appropriate. Compare that with Morrowind where there were whole swathes of the map where a low level character simply could not go. Those areas were not demarcated (like zones in an MMO) nor were players given much warning about the danger before heading in. This is also true in other video games as well.

Personally, I have never understood the idea that every combat has to be level-appropriate. Fantasy worlds are very dangerous and PCs are often heading into areas where scary monsters live. If you delve into a Dungeon, then you should expect to find things in there that maybe you can't handle. That makes the world feel real in ways that making everything level appropriate does not.

I suppose this feeds into the old "where did all the wolves go?" question, which asks why PC's fight wolves in random encounters at lower levels but after leveling up a fair amount, they never encounter any wolves. From a story perspective, it can be hand waived away as "the PCs are killing the same number of wolves but those encounters are no longer interesting, therefore no longer shown on screen." I'm not sure I entirely agree with the hand waving but it is a common trope, especially if you sub any other low level monster in place of wolf.

What I liked about 4E was that it gave DMs a better guide for creating exciting encounters. 3.x's system relied much more heavily on experience and gut instinct than anything else. I can more accurately tell what kind of encounters will be hard or easy than in 3.x. I would never stick to level appropriate encounters (how boring) but it is nice knowing the players won't walk all over the fight (which is always disappointing when you had an epic encounter in mind).

Quote from: SteerpikeThe same applies to treasure.  If they decide they want to burglarize the Temple of the Abyss in the Lady's Ward then if they manage to somehow trick their way past the high-level evil Clerics (mug some acolytes, use a few Alter Self spells to take their places, reserarch some rituals to fit in...) and pickpocket a key or something, they might be able to get their hands on something like an Unholy Staff (http://www.d20pfsrd.com/magic-items/staves/unholy-staff) even though it's way more powerful/expensive than their average gold-per-level is supposed to dictate.  But if they just mess around in the Hive fighting low-level thugs they'll probably get small change.

Something I loved about 1st edition AD&D in that they had a rule where by PCs would gain XP equal to how much gold they looted. I loved this rule because it allowed PCs to jump past the idea that the only way to get XP was to kill monsters. It rewarded players for creative thinking and well executed plans.

Quote from: Steerpikein my 3.X games, there's no such thing as "just a +1 sword," ever).

I'm the same way. Nothing disinterests me more than than a flavorless +1 Sword or a +1 Feat.

sparkletwist, I'm beginning to see where you're coming from on many things. As a world builder, I'm very surprised that some of those issued bugged you. Some of them go back to the difference between simulation and narration; the players don't need to know how much a bag of flour costs because the game is about killing monsters and taking their stuff, not baking cakes. The missing world fluff is/can be made by the DM, as many of us here do (who actually ran Grayhawk after getting their feet wet? The first game I ran was in my setting ...). Oh, and that world fluff is in the DMG, by the way (in a chapter titled "The World").

You say spells didn't do anything outside of combat; aside from breaking stuff with damage spells (I know, a stretch), many utility spells work out of combat. Just going through the wizard's powers in the PHB 1: ghost sound, light, mage hand, prestidigitation, thunderwave (it doesn't set a weight limit, powers that target creatures can target objects, so one could use it to shove big things if you aren't worried about damaging them), expeditious retreat (short duration, but it does move you double your speed for a single action), feather fall, jump (arguably more useful out of combat than it would be in combat), shield (interrupt, could be useful during exploration for dealing with traps or other natural hazards), Dimension Door, Disguise Self (entirely non-combat), Dispel Magic (breaks zones, less useful than ye olde version, but it can still be used out of combat), Invisibility, levitate, wall of fog, blur (defense bonus doesn't help, but it makes you invisible to people 25 feet away from you), resistance, displacement (interrupt, again, useful for traps and hazards), fly, greater invisibility, mass fly, mordenkainen's mansion ...

That's all without taking the logical leap to say that cold spells (ray of frost) can make things cold/freeze water, and that fire spells (scorching burst) can burn things or make things hot/melt ice. Now, you may point out that the wizard couldn't learn very many of these. The Essentials wizard was expanded to knowing 2 utilities of each level, but even that might not have been enough for more people. I fully believe learning new powers/spells should have been able to be done with feats/gold, like in the old day; as long as you didn't get more slots, just more options, it would have been fine.

So what that rituals cost money? Money isn't needed for characters to be as strong as they're assumed to be (like in 3E); it's only assumed that players have 3 items and improve them every 5 levels or so (there's even a sub system for giving these bonuses out with level progression to get away from that; 3E only had that in the Vow of Poverty feat). Rituals costing money means the casters aren't able to divine their way out of every problem without the group pitching in with some money (or even some skill checks), making it a group effort instead of one person always saving the day.

Remember, you "needed" a certain amount of money, in magic items, to be at the assumed strength in 3E; the system just didn't tell you what you needed. I will continually point to Vow of Poverty to show you exactly what progression was assumed (add it up, it's consistently worth 80% or so of a character's expected wealth).

You ask how "Phalanx Soldier" increases the AC of a hobgoblin when they are next to their allies ... when it's in the name; they form a Phalanx. It is a "feat" that the Hobgoblin was assigned; does it somehow make it different that it's in their stat block instead of in a list of feats that you then need to look up elsewhere? I'm pretty sure such a feat actually exists. Want the hobgoblin to not have it? Simply take it away and give them something else (need to make sure it's balanced? Balance it against a feat).

You say you can't drop a magic item onto the hobgoblin? This suggests a lack of familiarity with the system. Monsters have a "magic threshold" baked into their stats. If you give them a magic item, you subtract the magic bonus from the item's bonus before modifying the monster's stats; if the magic bonus is larger than the item's bonus, it doesn't change anything. A level 6 monster's magic threshold is +1; so you could give it a +2 weapon and that would increase it's to hit and damage by 1 (you have now voluntarily made the monster more challenging, but also given the players some treasure in the process).

As for the math of skill challenges being incorrect, the only thing that was mathematically incorrect was that the number of failures needed scaled in the initial version. The true failing was not giving more examples and walking DMs through creating them until a much later book.

So, in support of my essay, your dislike of the system seems to partially come from it lacking (arguably) superfluous elements that supported simulation but didn't add to the core of the game? Yes, a lot of that fluff adds character, which is why I've said that part of 4E's failing with many people was its presentation.

And almost everyone agrees the feat taxes were bad. Looking at their companion rules (NPCs who hang out with the party), the companions scale faster than the PCs. In all the material posted about companion, npc, and monster creation, the designers have made assumptions that the players will be spending some of their feats on these things. The exact language is this:

Quote from: DMG (4E) pg 187Level bonuses and Magic Threshold

As player characters gain levels, they choose feats and gain magic items that increase their attack bonuses and defenses. The level bonus, shown on the table below, is an abstraction that helps NPCs keep pace with characters. You can think of it as representing feats you're not bothering to choose, low-level magic items, or the NPC's intrinsic power.

Whether or not this was the correct decision, it was the assumption the designers made.

E_E, there was really nothing in the DMG that said you couldn't throw the party against a higher or a lower level threat. It recommends a level range (something like -4 to +7 for individual threats; -2 to +4 for encounters themselves), but that's only really the range that's beatable; those are easy, medium, and hard encounters. Throw the party against something higher if you want, but the guidelines are there to tell you that this isn't going to be a fight, it's going to be a slaughter. Likewise if you throw them against something below them.

If a DM is trying to create a living, breathing world, rather than a "just" a game setting, then a few encounters vastly below or above could add that color. The wolves don't have to disappear (though one might think the wolves will just keep their distance).

Quote from: XeviatAs a world builder, I'm very surprised that some of those issued bugged you. Some of them go back to the difference between simulation and narration; the players don't need to know how much a bag of flour costs because the game is about killing monsters and taking their stuff, not baking cakes. The missing world fluff is/can be made by the DM

Yes, I am a world builder, but if I'm building a world for a given system, I'd like to know how what I'm building works in that system. The table of costs was a glib example of something that I think is sort of iconic to D&D, or at least was in 1st, 2nd, and 3rd editions: the big list of prices of every random thing you could possibly want to buy. Is it absolutely essential? Of course not. However, the bigger point here that I was making is that 4th edition leaves a lot up in the air that the rules should address. By saying "the game is about killing monsters and taking their stuff, the DM can make up the rest" you've essentially agreed with me that 4e eliminated everything that wasn't combat and left it all up to DM fiat. So I guess we agree on that point after all?

Quote from: XeviatYou say spells didn't do anything outside of combat; aside from breaking stuff with damage spells (I know, a stretch), many utility spells work out of combat.

The thing is, though, the reason many of them work is due to DM fiat. I actually probably should have said "spells often have no documented effects in the rules outside of combat," which is mostly true. For example, ray of frost just talks about how much damage it does. Sure, the DM can rule that you can freeze water, but how much water? Does it freeze it solid or just make it slushy? To be fair, the 3e version is vague as well, but 3e also had plenty of spells that enumerated both combat and non-combat applications, and, maybe this is just bias, but 3e's spell descriptions always felt like they had more useful information in them. (Maybe they were just longer, or something...)

The 3e version of burning hands stipulates that flammable materials catch fire if the spell touches them and that characters can extinguish this fire as a full-round action. The 4e version... says nothing. Except the damage it does. Even stuff that seems non-combat oriented is still combat-biased. The 3e version of invisibility has long explanations on what happens to your gear, your light sources, how you can interact with the world, and so on. The 4e version basically just says "monsters can't see you when you're running around the gridmap, and it ends when you attack," because that's the entire game world that 4e mechanics interact with, or more or less.

Quote from: XeviatIt is a "feat" that the Hobgoblin was assigned; does it somehow make it different that it's in their stat block instead of in a list of feats that you then need to look up elsewhere?

It matters because these names are just convenient identifiers and don't actually mean anything. If I have the feat "Power Attack," then I know how that feat works, and I know that it'll work the same for everyone else who also has that feat, because it's coming off of a master list somewhere of feats. On the other hand, in 4e, the powers are pretty much unique to each monster and the rules for how to use a monster are essentially baked into that monster's stat block. You can throw together a supposed master list but it doesn't actually mean anything because powers like "Short Sword" and "Evil Eye" vary from monster to monster in ways that cannot be logically discerned.

Quote from: XeviatYou say you can't drop a magic item onto the hobgoblin? This suggests a lack of familiarity with the system. Monsters have a "magic threshold" baked into their stats.

Where? This certainly isn't included anywhere in their stat block.

Quote from: XeviatAs for the math of skill challenges being incorrect, the only thing that was mathematically incorrect was that the number of failures needed scaled in the initial version.

A system where you need to "get X successes before you get Y failures" discourages participation, because anyone more likely to add a failure than a success shouldn't even bother picking up the dice. This is just how the math works, and this also means skill challenges boil down to the best party member spamming their best skill, all the time. I'd argue a skill challenge system that was mathematically biased to encourage monotony and discourage participation was fundamentally broken.

Quote from: Xeviatyour dislike of the system seems to partially come from it lacking (arguably) superfluous elements that supported simulation but didn't add to the core of the game?

No, I really think the game has deep structural problems, which I've tried to highlight here.

Quote from: XeviatWhether or not this was the correct decision, it was the assumption the designers made.

Ok, fine. It was the assumption the designers made. It was a bad assumption, and I dislike that they made it.

Quote from: Elemental ElfYou and I definitely see Diversity as a strength (I *love* the Unearthed Arcana) but others completely disagree.  It's no difference than 3.5. I know tons of people that loathe 3.x because there are so many different mechanics, many of whom are completely unrelated and often ill-tested. They cite all the weak (Hex Blade, Dragon Shaman, Binder) and useless (True Namer, CoW Samurai, etc.) classes as examples of why diversity isn't always a good thing (especially when you're paying money for these books).  

Yeah, I will definitely cop to this.  There was a ludicrous amount of broken stuff  (http://community.wizards.com/go/thread/view/75882/19869366/The_most_powerful_character._EVER.)in 3.X, and it really did rely on DM/player judgment and/or houseruling.  I definitely come down on the diversity > balance issue, though.  As in, if I have to pick one, I'd prefer a sometimes-unbalanced game with variety and interesting stuff in it to a balanced but samey one.

I totally get what you mean, though, that 4E can play as an excellent "WARGAME/rpg."  I guess one's mileage varies on 4E to the extent that that sounds like fun.  I actually love wargames (I was into Warhammer 40000 years before I got into D&D) and even wargame-rpg hybrids (I played a fair bit of Mordheim).  It's just not what I want from D&D, and it was disappointing to see D&D go in that direction, for me.

Quote from: Elemental ElfWhat I liked about 4E was that it gave DMs a better guide for creating exciting encounters. 3.x's system relied much more heavily on experience and gut instinct than anything else. I can more accurately tell what kind of encounters will be hard or easy than in 3.x. I would never stick to level appropriate encounters (how boring) but it is nice knowing the players won't walk all over the fight (which is always disappointing when you had an epic encounter in mind).

I can totally see that.  4E definitely does have some advantages, and one is that it's a lot less challenging for a rookie DM.

Quote from: sparkletwistTo be fair, the 3e version is vague as well, but 3e also had plenty of spells that enumerated both combat and non-combat applications, and, maybe this is just bias, but 3e's spell descriptions always felt like they had more useful information in them. (Maybe they were just longer, or something...)

There were also so many more of them, and some had some real character.  Magic Jar.  Rope Trick.  Ironwood.  Clone.  To be honest I don't know if some of these made it into 4E (a few might have),  maybe as rituals, but I remember looking through the lists and seeing that a lot had been cut, presumably sacrificed on the altar of balance.  There were lots of spells added as well, but a lot felt like variations of the same thing - tweaked damage numbers and types, area of effect, and saving throw types with a different name slapped on (there are some good variations and neat things, but nothing wild, and nothing worth the loss of diversity).

Quote from: sparkletwistThe 3e version of burning hands stipulates that flammable materials catch fire if the spell touches them and that characters can extinguish this fire as a full-round action. The 4e version... says nothing. Except the damage it does. Even stuff that seems non-combat oriented is still combat-biased. The 3e version of invisibility has long explanations on what happens to your gear, your light sources, how you can interact with the world, and so on. The 4e version basically just says "monsters can't see you when you're running around the gridmap, and it ends when you attack," because that's the entire game world that 4e mechanics interact with, or more or less.

This is so perceptive - this is exactly the issue.

Earlier editions of D&D were broadly focused on adventuring - everything from hiring porters and cohorts, buying torches and rations, setting up camp, dealing with dungeon inhabitants, sometimes even getting lucky (http://www.toplessrobot.com/random_harlot_table.jpg), and, yes, fighting monsters.  4th edition is hyper-focused on that last part, and basically throws up its hands at the a great deeal of the rest of it - not completely, or anything, but by and large.

Quote from: sparkletwist"Smart play" is so often just a synonym for "a play style the DM agrees with."

This is kind of what I meant by 4E's authoritarianism - instead of the play style the DM agrees with, 4E substitutes the play style the designers agree with.  No longer can I play a CN zombie-oriented tanner-turned-necromancer Wizard/Ranger/Rogue with a forbidden school in Evocation and maxed ranks in Craft (leatherworking) and Profession (tanner), because that character isn't optimized to the standards of munchkiny powergamers concerned only with their DPS, I have to play another Warlock or Wizard with the standardized selection of damage-causing spells and debuffs, I guess because they assume I'm going to get jealous of the Evoker's mechanically optimized fireballs.

To me, skill challenges as presented in the books are pretty boring, doubly so when the DM tells you exactly which skills you can use and makes every PC roll a check. Those are the worst kind of challenges and, sadly, the variety I think many have been involved in.

What I generally use them for is... Let me give a few examples.

Say the PCs are in the last room of a dungeon where the BBEG is working on a blood ritual where by he will sacrifice the Princess to his dark deity and summon a big demon. The BBEG has placed a dome-shaped force field around himself and the alter, thereby preventing the PCs from assaulting him. To keep his enemies distracted, he has his zombies attack the PCs. The force field spell partially relies on a complex network of ancient elven runes (located on the floor through out the room) to stay active. To eliminate the Force Field, the PCs can try to use thievery to carefully etch away select pieces of the ancient elven runes, use their knowledge of the arcane to determine exploitable weak point in the force field or use perception to find those spots with a keen eye. After the PC's etch away enough of the runes or determine where the weak points are, the Force Field will either collapse instantly (runes) or after one attack (finding the weak point).

Let's say the PCs need to break into a Castle's dungeon. The PC's need to learn about the shoft rotations of the guards, the various secret entrances to the castle, where guards are likely to funnel out of if something goes wrong, learn about the natural surroundings of the castle (for exploitable terrain) and its history (perhaps there are other who have attempted to gain illicit entrance before). To figure all of this out, players can roll a variety of skills from Diplomacy, Intimidation, Bluff, Dungeoneering, History, Nature, Perception, Stealth, Thievery, etc. It's all in how the PCs go describe how they want to obtain the information. Heck, even outright Bribery would count for a success (or more than one if the right cog was greased).

The PC's are in a blistering hot desert. They are two days march out of the nearest town. Supplies and morale are running low. What does each PC do to aid the cause? One PC might use Athletics to march ahead of the party and scout out a better path, while another might use endurance to bare the hardship of the unforgiving environment. A third might use his knowledge of nature to track some animals and see if he can get some food. One character might use Bluff to perform a song to lift the spirits of the men, another may recount a religious tale to do the same. A healer might tend to the sunburns of his allies and help them avoid heatstroke. Another might use Perception to keep an eye out for game, or for Bandits.

There can be as many or as few rounds as necessary for the challenge. It is often best to push the PCs to be as creative as possible with the descriptions of what they do during a skill challenge and allow them to do weird/crazy things if it is within the bounds of plausibility.

For example, what if the party Barbarian in the first example wants to ignore the Zombies and instead hurl slabs of tile or pieces of crumbling columns at the Force Field? I'd totally allow it as it sounds cool and is well within the realm of plausibility. In the second example, a PC could just bribe a guard to get some info. That would work without a roll and may count as more than one success if the right wheel was greased (subsequent bribes might alert a higher up and thus equal a failure). In the third example, I might allow the PC's trying to find game a chance to roll an attack to see if they catch/kill their prey (that attempt counting for or against the PCs, depending on success).

Skill Challenges are a weird concept until you really think of more creative ways to integrate them into your game.

Quote from: sparkletwist

Quote from: XeviatYou say you can't drop a magic item onto the hobgoblin? This suggests a lack of familiarity with the system. Monsters have a "magic threshold" baked into their stats.

Where? This certainly isn't included anywhere in their stat block.

Page 174 of the DMG. The Monster Magic Threshold is very easy to remember because goes up by 1 every half-tier (1-5 is +0, 6-10 is +1, etc.).

Quote from: sparkletwist

Quote from: XeviatYou say you can't drop a magic item onto the hobgoblin? This suggests a lack of familiarity with the system. Monsters have a "magic threshold" baked into their stats.

Where? This certainly isn't included anywhere in their stat block.

DMG, The DM's Toolbox, Customizing Monsters, Adding Equipment, pg 174. It's also discussed on page 187, in the section on creating NPCs, which are built using the same classes, powers, and I suppose feats, that the players have access to.

Quote from: sparkletwist

Quote from: XeviatAs for the math of skill challenges being incorrect, the only thing that was mathematically incorrect was that the number of failures needed scaled in the initial version.

A system where you need to "get X successes before you get Y failures" discourages participation, because anyone more likely to add a failure than a success shouldn't even bother picking up the dice. This is just how the math works, and this also means skill challenges boil down to the best party member spamming their best skill, all the time. I'd argue a skill challenge system that was mathematically biased to encourage monotony and discourage participation was fundamentally broken.

Except that the game is designed so that everyone has skills, and skill challenges are supposed to involve a wide enough variety of skills so that people can participate. If a skill challenge can be won by spamming the same skill over and over again, I'd argue that it shouldn't be a skill challenge (getting someone to be convinced that your name is Charles and that you went to school with him probably isn't enough of something to warrent a challenge, just a single check). The later rules for skill challenges even limit the number of successes that can be achieved by a single skill.

Though you are correct, it does make participating feel like you're going to hurt things. I've always argued that skill challenges should have been X successes in Y rounds, so everyone is going to scramble to make attempts. So you're right, there is a flaw with them. I wouldn't say broken, though; from my experiences, people don't feel left out when they're left out of a non-combat encounter, but if they can't contribute in a combat encounter they're going to feel weak.

Quote from: sparkletwist

Quote from: Xeviatyour dislike of the system seems to partially come from it lacking (arguably) superfluous elements that supported simulation but didn't add to the core of the game?

No, I really think the game has deep structural problems, which I've tried to highlight here.

A number of your highlights seem, to me, to be misunderstandings of the game. You also argue about things that are entirely fluff, like the name of a power getting reused from one monster to another, or that the "shortsword" power (actually a weapon attack, even though all attacks are written with the power block) doesn't mean anything from one monster to another (aside from that it is, you know, an attack involving sticking someone with the pointy end of a shortsword). You in one paragraph say that the "Phalanx Tactics" ability doesn't tell you what it is, yet the "Power Attack" feat does?

Quote from: sparkletwist

Quote from: XeviatWhether or not this was the correct decision, it was the assumption the designers made.

Ok, fine. It was the assumption the designers made. It was a bad assumption, and I dislike that they made it.

That's fine. We both agree on that, actually. Part of the work I've been doing in my houserules is removing the entire notion of "mandatory" feats. The trouble is that it does constrain the design space for feats. If there's a feat that grants +1 to attack, then it disrupts the math if it doesn't need to be taken or it is required if it needs to be taken. If Players got 5 feats as they leveled up, and feats were all balanced against each other (+1 attack, +1 AC, +2 NAD, +1 damage/tier), then they'd be fine.

The other way to balance the feats is to make none of them affect the default math. Power Attack is a good example; it's a trade off. Learning a new maneuver is another good example; if it doesn't give you another use, just another option, it is horizontal growth rather than vertical growth. But this means that no feats can grant a blanket bonus to things (unless that bonus doesn't stack with something else that's assumed; one could have quasi-magical feats grant enhancement bonuses, since the game assumes them; the feat would be away of getting around needing an item; I also think spells could grant enhancement bonuses too, so they'd feel like they're scaling when really they wouldn't be).

This is getting really heated, far more than it should. I've been trying to not use personal language, and I thank you for not either.

Quote from: Steerpike

Quote from: Elemental ElfYou and I definitely see Diversity as a strength (I *love* the Unearthed Arcana) but others completely disagree.  It's no difference than 3.5. I know tons of people that loathe 3.x because there are so many different mechanics, many of whom are completely unrelated and often ill-tested. They cite all the weak (Hex Blade, Dragon Shaman, Binder) and useless (True Namer, CoW Samurai, etc.) classes as examples of why diversity isn't always a good thing (especially when you're paying money for these books).  

Yeah, I will definitely cop to this.  There was a ludicrous amount of broken stuff  (http://community.wizards.com/go/thread/view/75882/19869366/The_most_powerful_character._EVER.)in 3.X, and it really did rely on DM/player judgment and/or houseruling.  I definitely come down on the diversity > balance issue, though.  As in, if I have to pick one, I'd prefer a sometimes-unbalanced game with variety and interesting stuff in it to a balanced but samey one.

I don't think Balance and Diversity are mutually exclusive but a lot of thought and testing has to be put into the relationship between the two from the get go. One of my all time favorite classes from 3.x was the Warlock. He epitomizes a lot of the problems with diversity, balance and how they relate. From the look of it, the Warlock is an awesome class that can shoot beams of raw arcane energy at his foes and channel his infernal gifts to manifest cool powers. When compared to Wizards, Clerics and Druids he comes off as a very good class. Obviously not stronger than those three but obviously not falling that far behind (like the Fighter), most especially when you factor in how good he is with Use Magic Device. However, look at the Warlock and compare him to an Archer. The base damage for Eldritch blast increases at the same rate as a Rogue's Sneak Attack. After 5 or so levels, you're dealing a lot of damage. To hit your enemies, you are rolling against their Touch, which means even a poorly min/maxed Warlock will be hitting most of the time against everything save the most acrobatic of foes. The poor Archer Ranger will never equal the raw output of a Warlock on a single attack, and even after a few iterative attacks may not be able to keep pace because he will be rolling against the much higher AC value. In that way the Warlock is much stronger than the Ranger. The Warlock will also have a wider breadth of spells to cast via magic items but, will always risk failure; where as a Ranger will never fail at casting a spell from a wand so long as the spell is on his spell list.

From a design standpoint, the creators of the game gave the Ranger more skill points, cool nature abilities, real spells and an animal companion. Even then, a min/maxer would never really chose an Archer Ranger over a Warlock because the Warlock is more powerful. However, another player may really like the idea of casting a few spells, fighting with an animal and tracking enemies for the party. For that person, picking an Archer Ranger is a no brainer. The two may not be even with one another and both lag behind CoDzilla but they have enough non-comparable abilities to allow someone a reasonable choice between the two.

That is how you strike a good balance when living in a world of diversity - try to keep everyone on the same playing field but make sure to include enough unique abilities in each class that it makes it difficult to compare the actual power of each class to one another.

Having said that, the elephant in the room will always be Clerics, Druids and Wizards that can perform many of the same unique abilities possessed by other classes on top of doing really powerful and cool things of their own.  

Quote from: SteerpikeI totally get what you mean, though, that 4E can play as an excellent "WARGAME/rpg."  I guess one's mileage varies on 4E to the extent that that sounds like fun.  I actually love wargames (I was into Warhammer 40000 years before I got into D&D) and even wargame-rpg hybrids (I played a fair bit of Mordheim).  It's just not what I want from D&D, and it was disappointing to see D&D go in that direction, for me.

Exactly. When I'm in the mood for a more tactical game, if often turn to 4E. It scratches an itch I often have when I don't have the time (or inclination) to bust out my 40k or Warmachine models. The system also works better, in many respects, in an online environment because it has far fewer rules debates than 3.X (and older editions).

Quote from: SteerpikeI can totally see that.  4E definitely does have some advantages, and one is that it's a lot less challenging for a rookie DM.  

It has advantages too when your players run off in a completely unanticipated direction (which happens often in my game since I abhor railroading) :)

To be honest, I almost wish a game could be developed where by it had both 3.p and 4E stat blocks. 4E is great for busting open the MM, slapping some monsters down and running a fun combat. The 3.p stat blocks are better for generating complex enemies (like bosses). 4E has a lot of functional templates to apply to monsters but it does not have the breadth of 3.x (like say I want to make a Half-Minotaur, Half-Dragon Balor - easy to do in 3.x, much harder to do in 4E (without feeling like a cherry picker)).

Quote from: Steerpike

Quote from: sparkletwistTo be fair, the 3e version is vague as well, but 3e also had plenty of spells that enumerated both combat and non-combat applications, and, maybe this is just bias, but 3e's spell descriptions always felt like they had more useful information in them. (Maybe they were just longer, or something...)

There were also so many more of them, and some had some real character.  Magic Jar.  Rope Trick.  Ironwood.  Clone.  To be honest I don't know if some of these made it into 4E (a few might have),  maybe as rituals, but I remember looking through the lists and seeing that a lot had been cut, presumably sacrificed on the altar of balance.  There were lots of spells added as well, but a lot felt like variations of the same thing - tweaked damage numbers and types, area of effect, and saving throw types with a different name slapped on (there are some good variations and neat things, but nothing wild, and nothing worth the loss of diversity).

At the same time, all of those spells are very potent and almost all of them can be cast by a single class. That's the problem with Wizards - you want them to have a ton of spells but then the amalgamation of all those spells propels them into the stratosphere in terms of power. Something I've oft considered is forcing Wizards to be a specialist Wizard and only allowing them a handful of spells outside their particular purview. In that way, a Conjurer would feel vastly different then a Transmuter, who would look nothing like an Evocationist. The Wizard's raw power is stamped down but they still have access to a wide variety of spells (especially with new spells added in almost every book ever released).

Quote from: Steerpike

Quote from: sparkletwistThe 3e version of burning hands stipulates that flammable materials catch fire if the spell touches them and that characters can extinguish this fire as a full-round action. The 4e version... says nothing. Except the damage it does. Even stuff that seems non-combat oriented is still combat-biased. The 3e version of invisibility has long explanations on what happens to your gear, your light sources, how you can interact with the world, and so on. The 4e version basically just says "monsters can't see you when you're running around the gridmap, and it ends when you attack," because that's the entire game world that 4e mechanics interact with, or more or less.

This is so perceptive - this is exactly the issue.

Agree completely. In 4E's rush for brevity it forgot some of the most important subtleties of the game.

Quote from: SteerpikeEarlier editions of D&D were broadly focused on adventuring - everything from hiring porters and cohorts, buying torches and rations, setting up camp, dealing with dungeon inhabitants, sometimes even getting lucky (http://www.toplessrobot.com/random_harlot_table.jpg), and, yes, fighting monsters.  4th edition is hyper-focused on that last part, and basically throws up its hands at the a great deeal of the rest of it - not completely, or anything, but by and large.

To be fair, 3.x did quite a good job of eliminating that aspect of the game when compared to 1st and 2nd editions (where minions and cohorts where necessary and classes eventually leveled up to the point where they earned Wizard Towers, Castles, Thieves Guilds and etc.).

Quote from: xeviatthe players don't need to know how much a bag of flour costs because the game is about killing monsters and taking their stuff, not baking cakes.

The flour wasn't there for baking cakes, any more than the flasks of oil were for lubing engines. Flour was there so you could see invisible creatures, find footprints (and maybe discover an ambush) on your way back to the surface, use it as a weight in crude improvised traps, etc. If you happened to need it as part of your rations on a long trek, that was just an added bonus.

Quote from: xeviatYou say spells didn't do anything outside of combat; aside from breaking stuff with damage spells (I know, a stretch), many utility spells work out of combat.

Keep in mind that it is very difficult (if not impossible) in 4e to focus on these utilities at the expense of blasting etc. Basically there is a core concept that you can tack stuff onto but not escape. It's one of those homogeneity things. Moreover, if the bulk of the stuff on your character sheet is "hurt things" and "hurt things harder but less frequently" and you've only got a few little occasionally applicable things (and no bags of flour) you're going to default to hurting things and hurting things harder.

Quote from: xeviatThrow the party against something higher if you want, but the guidelines are there to tell you that this isn't going to be a fight, it's going to be a slaughter. Likewise if you throw them against something below them.

One sided slaughters are a feature and not a bug of older editions. The whole point is that the party is supposed to do everything in their power to self-select their challenges and sometimes deliberately bypass the logic of the fight. Sometimes they're supposed to sit on the mummy's sarcophagus, drill holes in the lid, and find a way to burn it to death instead of letting it out to fight. It's part of the old survival horror bit.

If everything is meant to be fought, there probably should have just been fewer levels. It's a valid option if you want to trade in the old survival horror elements for an action adventure game. As with a less restrictive smaller pool of options, this would probably be a nice time saving option for a homebrew.

Quote from: XeviatThis is getting really heated, far more than it should. I've been trying to not use personal language, and I thank you for not either.

I think we're all doing OK.  No one's mentioned the Third Reich yet.  I think we're just having a spirited debate.

I will say this - is this thread about deciding which edition is objectively better (4E vs 3E)?  Is it about defending 4E?  Is it just comparing the pros and cons of each edition?  Or is it about trying "to understand what some fans of 3E didn't like about [4E]" as you say at the start of the essay?  I've been answering the lattermost question - describing those things I don't like about 4E, as a fan of 3rd/Pathfinder.  While this necessitates some comparing of editions, it hasn't been my focus - I'm not trying to win an argument, per se, I'm just pointing out those things about 4E I don't like and trying to explain why.  I don't think I'm "mistaken" about these things, or that all it would take me to like 4E would be to look at it in a different light; I don't think it's just that 4E presents itself badly, either (although it does that, too).  I think this is where sparkletwist is coming from, too, highlighting those things she doesn't like.  It's not that we're trying to prove our superiority as gamers for not liking 4E, it's that we're trying to help you identify the things about 4E we don't like so that you can understand the widespread dislike of the edition and so create a hack that attempts to fix/mitigate these issues.

Quote from: Elemental ElfTo be fair, 3.x did quite a good job of eliminating that aspect of the game when compared to 1st and 2nd editions (where minions and cohorts where necessary and classes eventually leveled up to the point where they earned Wizard Towers, Castles, Thieves Guilds and etc.).

I definitely agree.  If I'd been designing 4th edition, these are the kind of things I'd have been exploring more - adding tools to further customize and individualize and expand and richen and deepen a group's game.  It felt like, in order to create a balanced combat game, 4th edition did the opposite - took things away.

The thing is, adding in those sorts of rules would annoy those people who wanted a more streamlined edition.  You can't please everyone - there is no perfect edition, no perfect balance.

Quote from: Elemental ElfTo me, skill challenges as presented in the books are pretty boring, doubly so when the DM tells you exactly which skills you can use and makes every PC roll a check. Those are the worst kind of challenges and, sadly, the variety I think many have been involved in.

I think sparkletwist's objection to skill challenges is mostly mathematical?

I like your examples a lot, but I don't really understand what skill challenges add.  In a 3.X game, all the different characters can do all of the different things you described as individual skill checks.  Some are going to succeed, some fail, and the consequences will be altered depending on their individual results.  What is gained by grouping it all together into a skill challenge, where if you lose a certain number of the rolls you lose it all?  It just feels like a minigame from a video game - artificial and immersion-breaking.  Skill checks worked just fine, especially when there were more than the barebones of skills.

Quote from: beejazzOne sided slaughters are a feature and not a bug of older editions. The whole point is that the party is supposed to do everything in their power to self-select their challenges and sometimes deliberately bypass the logic of the fight. Sometimes they're supposed to sit on the mummy's sarcophagus, drill holes in the lid, and find a way to burn it to death instead of letting it out to fight. It's part of the old survival horror bit.

This is what I was trying to get at with my "I don't really care about scaling" rant.  3rd edition was bad enough about this, but 4th edition elevates this to a fine art.  Why does the game need such a finely calibrated assumed-default set of challenges, treasure, power, etc?  Why does there need to be such a ridigly defined assumed arc to progression?  If this is what player empowerment means - where players are expecting a certain challenge level, getting annoyed if they can't kill everything they encounter, and whining that they didn't get the +1 Wounding Short Sword they put on their wish-list - I want none of it.

Quote from: SteerpikeThis is kind of what I meant by 4E's authoritarianism - instead of the play style the DM agrees with, 4E substitutes the play style the designers agree with.

I agree with this. Perhaps my perspective is skewed/narrow, but it really seems to me that 4th edition is designed around a relatively specific play paradigm and rapidly falls apart if you diverge from it. Granted, every system falls apart if you diverge too much from certain intended play paradigms, but I feel like the problem with 4e was that a great many of the excluded play styles were things that were perfectly within most people's definition of what "playing D&D" meant.

If your DM ran a very hack-and-slash oriented game that strictly followed CR, a lot of the problems you're feeling might arise in 3e games, too. However, I feel like that was just one way to play 3e. It's more or less the only way to play 4e.

Quote from: SteerpikeIf this is what player empowerment means - where players are expecting a certain challenge level, getting annoyed if they can't kill everything they encounter, and whining that they didn't get the +1 Wounding Short Sword they put on their wish-list - I want none of it.

I think I'm probably one of the biggest advocates of "player empowerment" on this forum, and I completely agree with you. :grin:

Quote from: XeviatYou also argue about things that are entirely fluff, like the name of a power getting reused from one monster to another, or that the "shortsword" power (actually a weapon attack, even though all attacks are written with the power block) doesn't mean anything from one monster to another (aside from that it is, you know, an attack involving sticking someone with the pointy end of a shortsword). You in one paragraph say that the "Phalanx Tactics" ability doesn't tell you what it is, yet the "Power Attack" feat does?

This isn't just about fluff. This is about being consistent.

In 3rd edition, any character or monster that has "Power Attack" has the same ability. If you see "Power Attack" somewhere, you can look it up on a table and know what it does. For convenience, you can write out what Power Attack does every time you give it to a monster, like what 4e does in its stat blocks, but you don't necessarily have to, because the thing called "Power Attack" is the same everywhere in the game that you find it.

Monster powers in 4e do not work like that. Each monster puts the complete rules for how its powers work in its stat block not just for convenience, but because each monster's power is essentially a one-off that is defined only in that stat block. This is like back in the bad old days of AD&D where monsters had their own fiddly mechanics that were explained nowhere but in that monster's own entry in the monster manual. It is just plain awful from the standpoint of any sort of consistency or creating a "master list" or whatever... and far from merely a fluff issue.

Quote from: XeviatThis is getting really heated, far more than it should. I've been trying to not use personal language, and I thank you for not either.

I do admit that I'm something of a hard-liner when it comes to specific game design concepts, and it does take debate in a certain direction fairly sharply and immediately. I think that making my own system (Asura) has really solidified in my mind what I consider to be good design principles, as well as a strong desire to have consistent rules that work right "out of the box." I've also been hammering away at numbers and probabilities long enough that I have probably become a bit overly sensitive to inconsistent/bad math.

Quote from: sparkletwistI think I'm probably one of the biggest advocates of "player empowerment" on this forum, and I completely agree with you.

I figured you would - if 4E had decided to stress player empowerment through mechanics that deliberately put control of the environment/plot into PC hands to some degree - or perhaps simply suggested a series of optional rules, tweaks, or variants for those who wanted a more "story-based," narratavist, cinematic, or dramatic game emphasizing collaborative storytelling and high action, as opposed to gritty, hard-nosed simulationism or whatnot - that would have been a bold and somewhat avant-garde approach.  Instead 4E's player empowerment seems largely limited to the players getting l33t loot at regularly scheduled intervals and being resassured their attack bonus is going to scale nicely with monster armour class provided their DM sticks to the Recommended Encounter Levels.

Quote from: steerpikeThis is what I was trying to get at with my "I don't really care about scaling" rant.  3rd edition was bad enough about this, but 4th edition elevates this to a fine art.  Why does the game need such a finely calibrated assumed-default set of challenges, treasure, power, etc?  Why does there need to be such a ridigly defined assumed arc to progression?  If this is what player empowerment means - where players are expecting a certain challenge level, getting annoyed if they can't kill everything they encounter, and whining that they didn't get the +1 Wounding Short Sword they put on their wish-list - I want none of it.

Some words have a few meanings. (http://www.giantitp.com/comics/oots0012.html)

In Borderlands, the starting town begins surrounded by little pup skags. Level up a little, and the starting town graduates to skag whelps. That's scaling.
BUT, in older editions of D&D, attack bonuses scale a lot while defense values scale relatively little. I could go into how cool this is and why, but that's kind of besides the point.The point is that the third sentence in this paragraph uses the word "scale" differently than the fourth.

With the latter, it can hurt you BADLY not to think about how things scale. Easy example: 3x diplomacy. There are no higher level challenges for diplomacy. By mid to high levels it can basically be used to bypass *every* fight, at least according to the given DCs. Another good example would be the widening gap between saves. By high levels, one character can have no fail chance and another can have no success chance within the same fight. This goes beyond what allowing the party to self-select challenges can fix. Now, a lot of this bad math can be "fixed" by feats or gear. This is where you get feat taxes. And this is also where you get the sense that specific gear is necessary at a specific point. Basically, if things are scaled badly enough (in this sense) you may be stuck scaling (in the former sense) the world around the PCs.

I get the concept, and I get that characters should improve in such a way that challenges don't become impossible/trivial, like having ridiculously low/high saves, but when scaling comes up it often seems that it gets caught up in assumptions about what kind of enouncters are "appropriate" for characters of that level, which sort of wearies me - that's all.  I totally understand the idea that progression needs to be modelled carefully.

Incidentally, I've never really understood the Diplomacy issue - unless I am reading the rules wrong, according to the 3.5 SRD it takes a full minute to change anything's mind (10 consecutive full-round actions) and "in some situations, this time limit may greatly increase," giving the GM essentially unlimited room for hand-waving and meaning that any creature which begins Hostile and is in a position to attack the characters (i.e. isn't tied up or something) can never be swayed with Diplomacy, because they'll attack before the Diplomacy can be completed.  Technically there's the "-10 penalty for a full-round-action" rushed Diplomacy thing, but the whole "in some situations, this time may greatly increase" thing gives DMs an easy way out of that, and personally I'd never let players use Diplomacy in the heat of combat unless the circumstances were very specific.

For those who aren't happy with the precise wording in 3.5 and still want to abuse Diplomacy, Pathfinder pretty much solves the issue - in Pathfinder, attitudes can only ever increase by one step, DCs are tied to Charisma, results only last for 1d4 hours, there are penalties for failure, you can only make one attitude change (of one step) every 24 hours, it explicitly doesn't work on low-Int creatures and requires a shared language (which any DM worth their salt would have assumed anyway) and furthermore "Diplomacy is generally ineffective in combat and against creatures that intend to harm you or your allies in the immediate future."  So Diplomacy actually can't be used to bypass any fights at all, at least not in Pathfinder, and functionally not in 3.5

In 3.0, Diplomacy is weird.  It's actually handled with opposed rolls, but a straight-up Charisma check (no ranks allowed) can be used to alter attitudes using a set DC.  But I don't really count 3.0, here; I don't think many people would run 3.0 over 3.5 or Pathfinder.

On diplomacy I specified the "by DCs" bit for a reason. Outside the -10 for full round bit, timing is nebulous as you say it is. The purpose of using diplomacy was mainly as an example of what could happen if you're thoughtless about this kind of thing. Personally, I really like bluff's 3.5 implementation as a model of social skills done relatively well.

It also has some good utility in Pathfinder combat (Intimidate as well) with the Feint action, perfect for Rogues.  However, this is getting off-topic...

Xeviat, do you have more thoughts on ways you think the two editions could be spliced?

Quote from: Steerpike

Quote from: Elemental ElfTo be fair, 3.x did quite a good job of eliminating that aspect of the game when compared to 1st and 2nd editions (where minions and cohorts where necessary and classes eventually leveled up to the point where they earned Wizard Towers, Castles, Thieves Guilds and etc.).

I definitely agree.  If I'd been designing 4th edition, these are the kind of things I'd have been exploring more - adding tools to further customize and individualize and expand and richen and deepen a group's game.  It felt like, in order to create a balanced combat game, 4th edition did the opposite - took things away.

The thing is, adding in those sorts of rules would annoy those people who wanted a more streamlined edition.  You can't please everyone - there is no perfect edition, no perfect balance.

3rd edition took out one of my favorite aspects of being a Paladin - the quest to obtain your mount. In 2nd edition, your mount didn't simply manifest because you hit a certain level. Oh no, you actually had to go on a righteous quest to find and acquire your mount (often this meant fighting a Black Knight in one on one combat).

Some people would decry the fact that you *have* to go on a quest to gain access to an ability as the game imposing its vision on the players but, I've never seen it that way. To me, those kinds of quests make a class (and the world) feel real and exciting.

When WoW first released, it had a lot these RPG hold overs baked into the game.  As time went on, most of those really cool RPG aspects (like having to find different class/profession trainers, finding weapon masters to train you in a new weapon, leveling up your ability with a new weapon, feeding your pet, going on quests to learn new abilities/get class-specific gear, actually having to travel around the world to find transportation across the seas, being given directions in an in-world sense (rather than an exact dot on a map) , doing quests to get access to dungeons, etc.) have been dropped in the name of "new players" and "streamlining." That definitely sounds eerily similar to what the designers were talking about in the lead up to 4E.

They often say that Role Playing Game culture is like a wobbly pendulum that constantly swings between the mentalities of Simmulationism (characters living in a world), Narrativism (protagonists in a story)  and Gamism (people playing a game). Every new edition attempts to swing the pendulum away from where it was and towards a different combination of the three. 4E was Gamist (heavily codified rules, game balance, player empowerment) while at the same time Narrativist (the focus was squarely on adventuring protagonists moving through a story-driven plot). 3.x/P was Simmulationist (peripheral skills, close integration of fluff and crunch, unification of monster-character design) and Gamist (codified rules, encounter balance, player empowerment). 2E was Narrativist (the focus was always on the story, classes had story driven abilities) and Simmulationist (weapon and non-weapon proficiencies, random encounter tables). 1E was a big mess but definitely Simmulationist (focus on single characters interacting with a pseudo-medieval world) at its heart with a bit of Gamism (left over influence from wargaming).

If we back track, the 1E to 2E switch lopped off Gamism and emphasized Narrativism. The switch from 2nd to 3rd dropped the Narrativism and became more Gamist. 3E to 4E dropped the Simmulationism and utilized Narativism. Based on this, I think we will see 5E emphasize Simmulationism and Narrativism (most especially since the Gamist elements from 4E were at the heart of many people's problems with the edition).

Circling back to the issue at hand, it really felt like the time period starting around 2006 there was a meta shift in our collective culture away from Simmulationism and towards Gamism. Oblivion eliminated most of the Simmulationist elements from Morrowind by emphasizing balance (I remember one designer even decried the fact that after level 20 or so in Morrowind, many of the challenges in the game became too easy). At the same time WoW was sloughing off a great many of its Simmulationist concepts and D&D was no different (the early design of D&D began in 2006/7).

I don't play enough mainstream video games these days to know where the pendulum currently lies but if Skyrim is any indication, there's at least a recognition that some Simmulationism is good (after all, it re-introduced crafting and didn't make all the enemies level appropriate at all times).

Quote from: Steerpike

Quote from: Elemental ElfTo me, skill challenges as presented in the books are pretty boring, doubly so when the DM tells you exactly which skills you can use and makes every PC roll a check. Those are the worst kind of challenges and, sadly, the variety I think many have been involved in.

I think sparkletwist's objection to skill challenges is mostly mathematical?

I like your examples a lot, but I don't really understand what skill challenges add.  In a 3.X game, all the different characters can do all of the different things you described as individual skill checks.  Some are going to succeed, some fail, and the consequences will be altered depending on their individual results.  What is gained by grouping it all together into a skill challenge, where if you lose a certain number of the rolls you lose it all?  It just feels like a minigame from a video game - artificial and immersion-breaking.  Skill checks worked just fine, especially when there were more than the barebones of skills.

That's partially why I am always shocked when I read about people disliking Skill Challenges. From my perspective, I was doing stuff like my examples long before 4E and Star Wars Saga released the rules for Skill Challenges. It just seemed like a natural part of the game, even if it was unstated.

What I like most about skill challenges is that it gives the challenge a basic framework with a more regimented DC. Not that I always stick to a single DC (especially if PCs are doing really strange or difficult things) but I like having the basic guideline as a reference point.

The idea of the collective failure has to be interpreted through the lens of what actually failed.

Take my example with the desert. Let's say the Endurance Check, the Nature Check (to find edible animals) and the Athletics checks all come up failures. The Challenge is failed. What do those failures tell me about the group's failure? First off the Fighter using Endurance likely collapsed from heat stroke, the Druid who tried to find game come up empty handed and the Ranger who tried to find a better path wound up getting lost. So now the group is in a terrible situation as everyone is slowly starving, one of their fellows is completely lost and must be found and another compatriot has feinted. None of that sounds like a good situation. What if the character using Perception to keep an eye out for dangerous creatures and Bandits wound up failing? Well, obviously, some kind of enemy would come rushing in.

As with everything, Skill Challenges are not always needed but it is nice to have the rules available for when they fit the narrative (like Montage Scenes).  

Quote from: Steerpike

Quote from: beejazzOne sided slaughters are a feature and not a bug of older editions. The whole point is that the party is supposed to do everything in their power to self-select their challenges and sometimes deliberately bypass the logic of the fight. Sometimes they're supposed to sit on the mummy's sarcophagus, drill holes in the lid, and find a way to burn it to death instead of letting it out to fight. It's part of the old survival horror bit.

This is what I was trying to get at with my "I don't really care about scaling" rant.  3rd edition was bad enough about this, but 4th edition elevates this to a fine art.  Why does the game need such a finely calibrated assumed-default set of challenges, treasure, power, etc?  Why does there need to be such a ridigly defined assumed arc to progression?  If this is what player empowerment means - where players are expecting a certain challenge level, getting annoyed if they can't kill everything they encounter, and whining that they didn't get the +1 Wounding Short Sword they put on their wish-list - I want none of it.

I actually used the Wish List in several campaigns over the last few years and believe me you it is as awful as you imagine. The worst part about it is that players somehow expect a chance for their wishlisted items to drop from even the least suited monsters (like wanting a Giant-Sized +2 Flaming Axe Ultimate Compensation to be dropped by a random Wolf the characters encounter in a forest). Many players actually get huffy when, after a few fights, an item from their wishlist doesn't magically manifest. I've heard tales from other DM's who were actually asked "aren't you going to roll a percentile die to see if my item drops?"

Yeah...

To be dead honest, we have video games to blame for this "always fighting level appropriate enemies and obtaining level appropriate gear at key stages during character advancement."

I find that haughty sense of entitlement so bewildering. It all reeks of artificiality, which really takes me right out of the game.

Quote from: Steerpike
It also has some good utility in Pathfinder combat (Intimidate as well) with the Feint action, perfect for Rogues.  However, this is getting off-topic...

Xeviat, do you have more thoughts on ways you think the two editions could be spliced?

My simplest idea for splicing the editions would be to take the entirety of 3E and adjust its scaling:

1) Have attack bonus and saving throw bonuses all scale at +1/2 per level. +1 BAB classes would need to get something in return for what they're losing; I think a damage bonus would work well. This scale follows how spell saves scale (for a caster's highest level spells), so the difference between equal level characters doesn't grow in scope as the game progresses.

2) I would reconsider skills and look into turning it into a proficiency system, more like 4E's skills. At first level, characters would gain a number of proficiencies; these could be skills, weapons, armor ... creating a balance between the classes. As characters gain levels, they'd get additional proficiencies, which could also be used for feat-like things like skill focuses. I'm really not sure how to deal with people's dislike of untrained skills getting better as people level-up; if people are expected to make a variety of skill checks, and not always of their choosing, then they need to scale (otherwise you might as well not make the check past 5th level or so). Another way to fix the issue would be to adjust skills to never be used defensively. Skills roll against Saves when used against a person; bluff vs. will, for instance. Stealth/Hide/Move Silently would be tough (I've always wanted an Awareness defense ...).

3) Hammer down the item progression. Yes, it means you'll "have to" upgrade your items. You have to upgrade your items already, the system just doesn't tell you when you should. Then, I'd provide guidelines on what to do with your group if they're low on items, or high on items (if standard items exist for +to hit/damage (or save DCs), AC, Saves, and DR/Energy resistance, then a lack or glut of items might equate to a level adjustment).

4) Look really close at the offensive potential of core spellcasters. A 20th level Wizard is going to have 17 to 23 spells that deal 20dX damage; [note=Damage]Why am I focusing on damage so much? The answer is simple really; it's all a fighter can do in combat. As I want characters to be balanced in combat, based around my years of experience with players, then the character's damage potential needs to be reasonably balanced. Sure, a wizard can deal more damage than a fighter, as the fighter's defenses are better and the wizard will need to sacrifice some of their offense to shore up their defenses. My point is that these combat actions (offensive, defensive, mobility) can be compared to each other.

I won't touch out of combat ritualesque spells.[/note]3E's standard day was 4 encounters (just like 4E), so that means around 5 spells at full power per fight (not to mention the piles of low level spells which can deal damage, or more potently can be used for buffs and other utility effects). 100d6 damage is an average of 350; if I'm generous and give their targets a 50% save rate, that's still 262 damage in a day. I'm going somewhere with this. A 20th level fighter would need to have a +7 Con mod to have that much HP; +3 could come from a +6 Con item, then with a starting +2 mod they only need to get 5 Wishes or read a +5 Manual of Gainful Exercise ... that's not entirely out of the question, I suppose. Can a fighter deal that much damage, even to a single target, with a full-attack action? I'm not sure.

5) Explore switching daily spells to encounter spells. This can be done very easy with my old 3E MP system; just cut MP by 1/4th and have it recover with a solid minute of rest (or 10 minutes, or an hour ... depends on what pace you want). Out of combat spells can still cost MP, you just tend to regenerate it after. Spell preparation would still limit what a caster can do, but I'm still worried about the whole "welp, guys, I don't have the right spell, lets wait till tomorrow" issue that rituals did a lot to counter. sparkletwist shows that some people really didn't like rituals, no matter what I do to them.

Trying to work off the 4E chassis seems like it would be more difficult. I've figured out a way to have the at-will/encounter/daily system and the 1-9th level spell system; At first level, your cantrips are at-will and your 1st level spells are encounter. As you gain new spell levels, they're daily at first. At certain levels, your daily slots upgrade to encounter slots. I'm currently looking at rewriting the half-caster classes (bard, paladin, ranger) to use spells as their dailies (paladin and ranger only had 1-4th level spells, after all); I got this idea from the way the Bladesinger alt-Wizard was handled. I'm also looking into the possibility of changing dailies from using their own slots to using Action Points, and then work out a dynamic system for granting APs to help set-piece battles have more dynamics; this would allow for Fighters to not have true dailies, as they'd just use their APs for extra attacks.

The more I work, though, the more I end up leaning towards building my own system off 4E's skeleton.

As for my whole point for the thread, I was analyzing the things I liked about 3E more than 4E, while highlighting that those issues felt superficial to me. I've only been defending 4E as hard as I have been against sparkletwist because I don't see most of her issues as issues for me. I can see them, and I can see why someone wouldn't like them, but some of them seem like splitting hairs to me. The lack of prices on mundane goods is such a small thing that it could really just be handwaved to a few silver for most things; Players are dealing with so much money, even at first level, that mundane goods aren't an issue past level 1. The names of monster powers seem like a minor detail to me; players don't even see those names.

I think 4E is an amazing system that has some math errors that irritate me so much that I have a hard time running it anymore; simply giving out the 5 tax feats for free and reducing the number of total feats by 5 feels so inorganic to me. None of my solutions are organic enough to pass muster, so it's been a year since my group came to a 4E game (partly because one of the players is a vehement opponent of 4E, whose arguments feel self-contradictory to me, and partly because of busy adult lives). But as good of a system I think 4E is, something did feel different to me. The book was boring to read, as I had to read through a list of powers to get an idea of what the character was like (in 3E, even the cleric, sorcerer, and wizard told me more about what they were) Part of it could have been that I was 18 when I started playing 3E, so I look back at it with rose-colored glasses.

Quote from: Elemental Elf4E dropped the Simmulationism and utilized Narativism

Utilizing the GNS framework, I don't think 4E is very Narrativist at all.  When I look at 4E's rules, I don't see a game designed to facilitate telling a story, as I do when I look at Burning Wheel or FATE or even Risus.  There are very few narrative mechanics, and the form of player empowerment has nothing to do with storytelling.  What I do see is a game about fighting (rather the opposite of a game about stories, about narratives).  Not adventuring, not even dungeon-delving, fighting.  If I had to pick a pole that 4E swings to, I'd say it's Gameism.  It doesn't seem to have much interest in representing an immersive, believable world or in telling a rich story; I'm sure a skilled DM could do both while running 4E, but the system would give him or her no help.

Like take Burning Wheel.  Now that's a Narrativist system.  Character stats are built around background, beliefs, instincts, and traits (adjectives describing the character) - around a character's personality.  There are emotional attributes for different races.  Rules like Let it Ride and Say Yes encourage a seamless story in which the players take the part of co-narrators.  Conflict mechanics are centered on things like intent and stakes (the more personal and story-driven, the better).  You gain experience from following your beliefs.  The whole thing is set up to favour organic story advancement rather than a linear plot, to discourage railroading and encourage player participation.  I can't think of a single mechanic 4E possesses that really works along these lines.

Quote from: Xeviat1) Have attack bonus and saving throw bonuses all scale at +1/2 per level. +1 BAB classes would need to get something in return for what they're losing; I think a damage bonus would work well. This scale follows how spell saves scale (for a caster's highest level spells), so the difference between equal level characters doesn't grow in scope as the game progresses.

I think this could work pretty well, although the idea that a 10th level Wizard and a 10th level Fighter have an equal chance to hit feels odd to me.  Possibly this comes from my fencing experience - in fencing, the whole goal is to hit the peson, obviously, and a skilled fencer is going to be much better at that.  But I can see the argument - HP is abstract, after all, and the Wizard's lower damage would represent a lack of accuracy.  So I think I could get behind this - or, at least, as a player, it wouldn't annoy me very much.

Quote from: Xeviat2) I would reconsider skills and look into turning it into a proficiency system, more like 4E's skills. At first level, characters would gain a number of proficiencies; these could be skills, weapons, armor ... creating a balance between the classes. As characters gain levels, they'd get additional proficiencies, which could also be used for feat-like things like skill focuses. I'm really not sure how to deal with people's dislike of untrained skills getting better as people level-up; if people are expected to make a variety of skill checks, and not always of their choosing, then they need to scale (otherwise you might as well not make the check past 5th level or so). Another way to fix the issue would be to adjust skills to never be used defensively. Skills roll against Saves when used against a person; bluff vs. will, for instance. Stealth/Hide/Move Silently would be tough (I've always wanted an Awareness defense ...).

I don't like this at all if it's actually a strict proficient/non-proficient system.  Take two Rogues: a first level Rogue and a 20th level Rogue.  In a strict proficiency system, where you are either proficient or non-proficient, those two are equally good at being stealthy or picking locks.  That really doesn't make much sense; in my experience, 3.X Rogue players are more excited about getting skill bonuses than combat bonuses.  AD&D got around this by making Thieving a kind of clumsy minigame (Hide in Shadows, Pickpocket, etc).  I suppose, though, that you'd probably be drawing more from 4E and having it so that skills did scale with your level (the +1/2 your level thing).  I would still probably prefer Pathfinder's skill system (max ranks = your level, anyone can take any skill, class skills provide a one-time +3 bonus), but I could live with it if there were plenty of skills/proficiencies on the list.

It'd be interesting to do a d20 hack that went the opposite direction from 4E and emphasized Skills instead of Feats.  So instead of even having a Base Attack Bonus or Saving Throws or Initiative feats or whatever, you just had Combat (Longsword), a Willpower skill, an Initiative skill, etc.  Hardly original (plenty of games have done this) but still... anyway, probably wouldn't be your bag.

Quote from: Xeviat3) Hammer down the item progression. Yes, it means you'll "have to" upgrade your items. You have to upgrade your items already, the system just doesn't tell you when you should. Then, I'd provide guidelines on what to do with your group if they're low on items, or high on items (if standard items exist for +to hit/damage (or save DCs), AC, Saves, and DR/Energy resistance, then a lack or glut of items might equate to a level adjustment).

I don't see why nerfing monster defence or whatnot isn't as acceptable a form of scaling, but OK, this makes sense.  It kills the sense of wonder from magic items a bit and feels very mechanical and vide-gamey, but a good DM might be able to imbue the process with a more fantastic feel.

Quote from: Xeviat4) Look really close at the offensive potential of core spellcasters. A 20th level Wizard is going to have 17 to 23 spells that deal 20dX damage; 3E's standard day was 4 encounters (just like 4E), so that means around 5 spells at full power per fight (not to mention the piles of low level spells which can deal damage, or more potently can be used for buffs and other utility effects). 100d6 damage is an average of 350; if I'm generous and give their targets a 50% save rate, that's still 262 damage in a day. I'm going somewhere with this. A 20th level fighter would need to have a +7 Con mod to have that much HP; +3 could come from a +6 Con item, then with a starting +2 mod they only need to get 5 Wishes or read a +5 Manual of Gainful Exercise ... that's not entirely out of the question, I suppose. Can a fighter deal that much damage, even to a single target, with a full-attack action? I'm not sure.

I think this would be vital, and absolutely necessary, to create anything close to a balanced 3.X.  Pathfinder helps this but by no means does it eliminate the problem.

Quote from: Xeviat5) Explore switching daily spells to encounter spells. This can be done very easy with my old 3E MP system; just cut MP by 1/4th and have it recover with a solid minute of rest (or 10 minutes, or an hour ... depends on what pace you want). Out of combat spells can still cost MP, you just tend to regenerate it after. Spell preparation would still limit what a caster can do, but I'm still worried about the whole "welp, guys, I don't have the right spell, lets wait till tomorrow" issue that rituals did a lot to counter. sparkletwist shows that some people really didn't like rituals, no matter what I do to them.

An easy fix, and I'm fine with this.  You might want to have a look at the Recharge Magic Variant (http://www.d20srd.org/srd/variant/magic/rechargeMagic.htm) for 3.X to see one alternative way to handle this.

Quote from: XeviatWhy am I focusing on damage so much? The answer is simple really; it's all a fighter can do in combat.

This is not quite true.  The fighter's job is also to take hits, to tank - or, really, to deflect hits with his high armour and shield.  His utility isn't just in dishing out damage, it's in keeping the Trolls away from the more fragile Wizard or drawing the Kobolds' fire from the Sorcerer while those classes get ready to use their killer spells.  I wonder, also, if taking and receiving hits is all the fighter should do, but maybe that's a discussion for another time.

Quote from: XeviatPart of it could have been that I was 18 when I started playing 3E, so I look back at it with rose-colored glasses.

I don't think this is it - I've been playing for about 12 years now, and I've recently had good reactions to plenty of game systems as well as bad ones.

Quote from: XeviatThe more I work, though, the more I end up leaning towards building my own system off 4E's skeleton.

I think this sounds like it's the best course of action for you.

For my 2cp, here are some things I think could improve 4E - or, rather, things that a system based on 4E could do that 4E itself doesn't.  You almost certainly won't agree with all of these things, and that's OK, it's just a list of ideas.

1) Remove healing surges and consider removing or restructuring martial encounter powers, as these features are immersion-breaking and artificial, and exemplify the cartoonish, video-game feel that simulationist types loathe.  Consider something like Iron Heroes' token system or the like as alternative means of fueling martial powers.

2) Expand the skill system beyond a meagre 17 skills.  Remove skill challenges.  Ensure that players who want to build skill-based characters with utility outside of combat, whose non-combat skills balance their decreased combat utility, have a chance to do so.  Make sure that skills improve over time.  This helps to flesh out the non-combat rules and ensures that the game is more than a tactical gridmap wargame with a bit of plot sketched between encounters. Remember that skills like picking locks, finding and detecting traps, being able to negotiate, being sneaky, discovering ancient secrets, gathering information, getting along in the wilderness etc are as if not more important as fighting is to many roleplaying games, and as such should be as if not more central to the mechanics of the game.  My group has plenty of sessions where there was minimal combat if any, but I doubt we've ever gone a session (or even more than about 10 minutes) without making skill checks.

3) Deal with the feat tax issue - for those bothered by this kind of thing - not by giving out feats or fiddling with character stats but by looking closely at monster design.  Lower monster Defences, attack bonuses, and the like accordingly so that feat tax need not be an issue.  Rigging monsters so that they're built on the same chassis as players could actually help this problem hugely, as it would ensure that monster stats are scaling at the same level as players'.

4) Likewise, tinker with monsters so that stat-boosting magic items aren't necessary to keep up with them.  Cull the bulk of magic items that simply provide numeric bonuses (+1 to saves or deflection or attack or whatever) because those are boring, annoying, and divest other magic items of their feel of wonder.  Stress items that have unique magical abilities or weapons that do unusual things, like harm creatures of only a certain type or return to your hand after thrown and whatnot.  This invests magic items with their proper gravitas.  Magical weapons could still be powerul, but perhaps more contextually.  Characters should not go shopping at Ye Olde Magicke Shoppe and load up on +2 Rings of Protection and +1 Arrows (admittedly mine sometimes do this, but on the other hand their home-base is Sigil, not your standard D&D medieval village).

5) Add back in the full Alignment spectrum.

6) Add in multi-classing options if possible.  If this leads to balance issues, where a multi-classed character is slightly less powerful than a single-classed character, realize that versatility helps to mitigate this disparity.

If we're talking core math, best case scenario for a new-school game has characters of the same level within about a ten point range*. In my game, I just wrote it so abilities go from +0 to +5 (and there's no stat/mod split) and skill training gives you a +5. Same sort of logic goes for skills, attack skills, saves, etc. As long as the progression has the same slope after that, the gap won't widen or shrink much. I'd go for a steeper slope and fewer levels/slower advancement to save on your work load.

*This applies most to things like saves (you can't choose not to use them) and less to things like magic (it's entirely okay for a character to have 0) but you can apply the same system across the board and just use trained/untrained to say who can do what sometimes.

Quote from: XeviatHammer down the item progression. Yes, it means you'll "have to" upgrade your items. You have to upgrade your items already, the system just doesn't tell you when you should.

You know, if this is your thing, I think the DMG2 had some decent ideas here with its "alternative rewards" system and you can actually get around the objections that people like Steerpike or me have to this whole mechanic. In the DMG2 version they tried to shoehorn it a little too much into the expected 4e item upgrade treadmill and kind of shot it in the foot by not allowing them to outright grant enchantment bonuses, but I think the idea is solid and worth importing more comprehensively: instead of throwing away your "generic +1 sword" for a "generic +2 sword" or something video gamey like that, your unique and legendary +1 weapon with tons of backstory gets a blessing from a god that makes it a +2 weapon... and you can keep on using it! So, it lets characters keep their unique and wondrous magic items throughout the campaign while still staying on the power curve.

Quote from: XeviatA 20th level Wizard is going to have 17 to 23 spells that deal 20dX damage

A 20th level Wizard is probably not going to be using many "high level blasts." I mean, seriously, you have dominate monster and wail of the banshee. You can just make guys be your slaves or flat out drop dead, so why are you worrying about damage at all? If you're using a higher level slot for a blast, it's probably going to be because it's quickened, not because you're casting polar ray. (This d6-per-level-damage stuff was good at level 1, which is why shocking grasp is a level 1 spell. We can do much, much better at level 20)

Quote from: Xeviatsparkletwist shows that some people really didn't like rituals, no matter what I do to them.

I don't like 4th edition's rituals for specific reasons, not just "because they're rituals." I don't like them because they take too much time and cost too much money. If you made them more like 3e spells, i.e., not take so long or cost so much money, then I would like them.

Yeah, I liked at least the idea of Rituals because they seemed to go against the grain of so much of 4E seemed to be about i.e. mechanics, fights, damage-dealing, balance obssession, powergaming as the assumed default state of play, etc.  Whereas most magic in 4E feels incredibly bland - "ooh, a slightly differently coloured power blast that creates a ball/ray/burst of ice/fire/acid/electricty/light/force and deals damage to the monsters, I am so stricken with awe and wonder I just wet myself" - Rituals held the potential to feel like actual magic, conjuring images of goat's heads and weird invocations in forbidden tongues not meant to be spoken by mortal mouths and meeting in a circle of stones at midnight after bathing in the blood of murderers, eating a live spider, and flagellating yourself with a whip made from the hair of virgin halflings.  Or whatever.  I don't really think, in practice, that's how Rituals played out, but I liked the idea of ceremonial magic being a big deal, as opposed to 1/encounter debuffs, uninspired utility spells (oh, I can fly now?  and turn invisible?  holy crap the designers really pulled out the stops on these spells, guys!) and the other boring, homogenous junk the regular spell-lists were just packed with.

Quote from: Steerpike
Yeah, I liked at least the idea of Rituals because they seemed to go against the grain of so much of 4E seemed to be about i.e. mechanics, fights, damage-dealing, balance obssession, powergaming as the assumed default state of play, etc.  Whereas most magic in 4E feels incredibly bland - "ooh, a slightly differently coloured power blast that creates a ball/ray/burst of ice/fire/acid/electricty/light/force and deals damage to the monsters, I am so stricken with awe and wonder I just wet myself" - Rituals held the potential to feel like actual magic, conjuring images of goat's heads and weird invocations in forbidden tongues not meant to be spoken by mortal mouths and meeting in a circle of stones at midnight after bathing in the blood of murderers, eating a live spider, and flagellating yourself with a whip made from the hair of virgin halflings.  Or whatever.  I don't really think, in practice, that's how Rituals played out, but I liked the idea of ceremonial magic being a big deal, as opposed to 1/encounter debuffs, uninspired utility spells (oh, I can fly now?  and turn invisible?  holy crap the designers really pulled out the stops on these spells, guys!) and the other boring, homogenous junk the regular spell-lists were just packed with.

This so much. WotC needed to tinker with the idea more fully to find what worked. Sadly, the metadata from the Character Creator probably told them putting resources into Rituals was a fool's errand. I always thought it would be cool if some of the darker rituals worked more like Incantations from 3.5's Unearthed Arcana.

Quote from: Steerpike

Quote from: Elemental Elf4E dropped the Simmulationism and utilized Narativism

Utilizing the GNS framework, I don't think 4E is very Narrativist at all.  When I look at 4E's rules, I don't see a game designed to facilitate telling a story, as I do when I look at Burning Wheel or FATE or even Risus.  There are very few narrative mechanics, and the form of player empowerment has nothing to do with storytelling.  What I do see is a game about fighting (rather the opposite of a game about stories, about narratives).  Not adventuring, not even dungeon-delving, fighting.  If I had to pick a pole that 4E swings to, I'd say it's Gameism.  It doesn't seem to have much interest in representing an immersive, believable world or in telling a rich story; I'm sure a skilled DM could do both while running 4E, but the system would give him or her no help.

But look at how much of the game is left to the DM to decide. They don't tell you how far a horse can go in a day, that you can buy flour, that your fire spells can light combustibles, how you can use your powers out of combat or the lack of rules for peripheral skills (crafting, profession, performance), etc. The game leaves all that information up to DM fiat, who judiciously adjudicates such issues in terms of his story. It's like the old Straczynski quote, "Traveling at the Speed of Plot." Everything that is not about a band of Adventurers doing heroic things in a Dungeon is left intentionally vague.

Quote from: sparkletwist

Quote from: XeviatHammer down the item progression. Yes, it means you'll "have to" upgrade your items. You have to upgrade your items already, the system just doesn't tell you when you should.

You know, if this is your thing, I think the DMG2 had some decent ideas here with its "alternative rewards" system and you can actually get around the objections that people like Steerpike or me have to this whole mechanic. In the DMG2 version they tried to shoehorn it a little too much into the expected 4e item upgrade treadmill and kind of shot it in the foot by not allowing them to outright grant enchantment bonuses, but I think the idea is solid and worth importing more comprehensively: instead of throwing away your "generic +1 sword" for a "generic +2 sword" or something video gamey like that, your unique and legendary +1 weapon with tons of backstory gets a blessing from a god that makes it a +2 weapon... and you can keep on using it! So, it lets characters keep their unique and wondrous magic items throughout the campaign while still staying on the power curve.

D&D Next has a great little PDF for putting some flavor on top of what would otherwise be a bland +1 Weapon. I just made a new weapon. It is an Abyssal Dagger whose blade is black metal and its hilt is crafted from the horns of lesser demons. The owner of the blade suffers nightmares every night but never remembers the substance of the dreams upon waking. The Dagger is Unbreakable by normal means. When the blade strikes a foe, the bearer hears a fragment of a song sung in Abyssal; if the lyrics were ever deciphered, they would reveal a secret [i.e. plot hook].

Quote from: sparkletwist

Quote from: Xeviatsparkletwist shows that some people really didn't like rituals, no matter what I do to them.

I don't like 4th edition's rituals for specific reasons, not just "because they're rituals." I don't like them because they take too much time and cost too much money. If you made them more like 3e spells, i.e., not take so long or cost so much money, then I would like them.

Rituals are stupid expensive and they were never pushed to their logical extreme because no one bothered with them (due to their initial cost). I really wish WotC had greatly reduced the cost of rituals, especially the lower levels ones. I have played in tons of 4E campaigns and never saw a ritual cast once. I only see them cast in my 4E games because I hand them out like candy.

Quote from: Elemental ElfBut look at how much of the game is left to the DM to decide. They don't tell you how far a horse can go in a day, that you can buy flour, that your fire spells can light combustibles, how you can use your powers out of combat or the lack of rules for peripheral skills (crafting, profession, performance), etc. The game leaves all that information up to DM fiat, who judiciously adjudicates such issues in terms of his story. It's like the old Straczynski quote, "Traveling at the Speed of Plot." Everything that is not about a band of Adventurers doing heroic things in a Dungeon is left intentionally vague.

Not providing rules for things and leaving things intentionally vague does not equate to narrativism.  And DM fiat is kind of the opposite of narratvisim as well, in a sense  Generally speaking, narratvism isn't really about the DM's story, it's about creating a story together, as a group, encouraging player-participation in the story.  The mechanics of 4E do not put the story at the center.  They do not encourage player-participation in the construction of narrative.  They do not foreground character back-stories, personality, or beliefs.  They do not provide a means for the players to influence the story beyond the actions of their characters.  They put combat at the center.

Narrativist systems use the rules of the game to create and encourage storyelling.  4E does not do this.  If having to come up with how much flour costs on my own time is meant to be a selling point, it's a pretty weak one.

Now I'm not saying a 4E campaign can't have a great story if the DM and the players put the effort in to make one, but this doesn't make it a narrativist system, a system which goes out of its way to priviledge the narrative over other concerns (like, you know, fighting and stuff).

For the record, when I play D&D I'm not looking for a narrativist experience, and I'd be somewhat ambivalent about adding serious "narrativist" mechanics into D&D, at least unless they were purely optional (which can be a bit inelegant).  But let's not kid ourselves that 4E stands up there with Nobilis or Amber Diceless or something.

Quote from: Elemental ElfD&D Next has a great little PDF for putting some flavor on top of what would otherwise be a bland +1 Weapon. I just made a new weapon. It is an Abyssal Dagger whose blade is black metal and its hilt is crafted from the horns of lesser demons. The owner of the blade suffers nightmares every night but never remembers the substance of the dreams upon waking. The Dagger is Unbreakable by normal means. When the blade strikes a foe, the bearer hears a fragment of a song sung in Abyssal; if the lyrics were ever deciphered, they would reveal a secret [i.e. plot hook].

Definitely a step in the right direction.  Ideally speaking, I think mechanics and fluff should converge more than this, but I commend the effort.

Quote from: Steerpike

Quote from: Elemental ElfBut look at how much of the game is left to the DM to decide. They don't tell you how far a horse can go in a day, that you can buy flour, that your fire spells can light combustibles, how you can use your powers out of combat or the lack of rules for peripheral skills (crafting, profession, performance), etc. The game leaves all that information up to DM fiat, who judiciously adjudicates such issues in terms of his story. It's like the old Straczynski quote, "Traveling at the Speed of Plot." Everything that is not about a band of Adventurers doing heroic things in a Dungeon is left intentionally vague.

Not providing rules for things and leaving things intentionally vague does not equate to narrativism.  And DM fiat is kind of the opposite of narratvisim as well, in a sense  Generally speaking, narratvism isn't really about the DM's story, it's about creating a story together, as a group, encouraging player-participation in the story.  The mechanics of 4E do not put the story at the center.  They do not encourage player-participation in the construction of narrative.  They do not foreground character back-stories, personality, or beliefs.  They do not provide a means for the players to influence the story beyond the actions of their characters.  They put combat at the center.

Narrativist systems use the rules of the game to create and encourage storyelling.  4E does not do this.  If having to come up with how much flour costs on my own time is meant to be a selling point, it's a pretty weak one.

Now I'm not saying a 4E campaign can't have a great story if the DM and the players put the effort in to make one, but this doesn't make it a narrativist system, a system which goes out of its way to priviledge the narrative over other concerns (like, you know, fighting and stuff).

For the record, when I play D&D I'm not looking for a narrativist experience, and I'd be somewhat ambivalent about adding serious "narrativist" mechanics into D&D, at least unless they were purely optional (which can be a bit inelegant).  But let's not kid ourselves that 4E stands up there with Nobilis or Amber Diceless or something.

Much of Narrativism is about giving people enough wiggle room to do cool things in a story that perhaps the rules do not account for. 4E does not openly give much of that power to players (their experience is vastly more gamist) but rather all the power is given to the DM. I'm not claiming that 4E is on the same level of Narrativism as FATE or Exalted or Marvel Heroic. However, when you venture outside of the 4E's core concept (fight/kill monsters) the game forces DM's to be Narrativist because everything is left completely vague. It forces the DM to think of player actions in terms of their story and how fast/slow they want the players to accomplish their tasks rather than relying on the arbitrary rule/guidelines that Gamist and Simmulationist games focus on.

My comparisons were simply comparing the editions of D&D to one another because all D&D Games are Gamist at their heart when you compare them to games completely tailored around other mentalities.

Quote from: Steerpike

Quote from: Elemental ElfD&D Next has a great little PDF for putting some flavor on top of what would otherwise be a bland +1 Weapon. I just made a new weapon. It is an Abyssal Dagger whose blade is black metal and its hilt is crafted from the horns of lesser demons. The owner of the blade suffers nightmares every night but never remembers the substance of the dreams upon waking. The Dagger is Unbreakable by normal means. When the blade strikes a foe, the bearer hears a fragment of a song sung in Abyssal; if the lyrics were ever deciphered, they would reveal a secret [i.e. plot hook].

Definitely a step in the right direction.  Ideally speaking, I think mechanics and fluff should converge more than this, but I commend the effort.

I agree that the best items are those where the fluff and the effects converge. However, I definitely believe in the old adage of "if you have ten magic items, one or two of them are always going to be cooler than the others." This is why I dislike the Christmas Tree effect that 4E and 3.x push so much. Magic Items should feel special and unique, not common place and mundane.

Quote from: Elemental ElfMuch of Narrativism is about giving people enough wiggle room to do cool things in a story that perhaps the rules do not account for. 4E does not openly give much of that power to players (their experience is vastly more gamist) but rather all the power is given to the DM. I'm not claiming that 4E is on the same level of Narrativism as FATE or Exalted or Marvel Heroic. However, when you venture outside of the 4E's core concept (fight/kill monsters) the game forces DM's to be Narrativist because everything is left completely vague. It forces the DM to think of player actions in terms of their story and how fast/slow they want the players to accomplish their tasks rather than relying on the arbitrary rule/guidelines that Gamist and Simmulationist games focus on.

Well, me might just have to disagree on this one.  I still don't think 4E is remotely narrativistic; I think the edition basically assumes that the players aren't really interested in anything other than defeating monsters and getting treasure, or rather (at the very lest) it assumes that those things are the central, overriding purpose of the game, rather than telling a story or collaborating on a narrative and bringing generic themes or "human" issues to the table.  Giving the DM and players pretty much 0 aid in constructing a narrative, no narative mechanics, and minimal help in world-building while aggressively concentrating on combat mechanics, grids, and loot seems like the opposite of narrativism to me.  I certainly don't see why 3.X (or even earlier editions) isn't "narrativist" by this standard; it's hardly as if the implied setting were super intrusive in 3.X, or as if the fact that they provided pricing for ten foot poles and lanterns alongside weapons in the Player's Handbook somehow destroyed the DM's storyelling powers.  No edition of D&D that I'm aware of has included any kind of mechanics that I'd characterize as properly "narrativist" in any concrete sense.  The extent to which a D&D game is or isn't "narrativist" is pretty much dependent on the DM, not the system, as I understand the term.  Perhaps this is just semantics.  Once again, I don't really think that 4E or D&D general not being especially narrativist is a weakness, I just don't think 4E privileges storytelling and narrative in any way - I think it pretty clearly privileges tactical grid-based combat at every juncture that it can.

I'm also not sure that a Gamist/Simulationist game necessarily involves "arbitrary" guidelines to accomplish tasks, but I'm not sure I understand exactly what you mean by this.  Frankly, I'm not that enamoured by GNS in general; it's a useful model at times, but it can be taken too far.

I know that when I look at systems for their narrativist content I am almost 100% looking for ways to handle interesting social conflicts rather than physical ones. My 2copper is with Steerpike. 4e isn't remotely narrativist (and honestly, neither is 3rd).

For what it's worth, I agree with Steerpike, too.

I also agree with the rather limited utility of GNS terminology. It's fine to throw around the words "narrativist," "simulationist" and "gamist" when you want to talk about the general categories that your game play could fall into, but the detailed analyses that originally spawned the whole theory don't actually make any sense... so it's hard to say much more than that and make any sense. (It's also why I always put the terms in scare quotes when I do use them)

So can we get back to bashing 4th edition? :D

Quote from: Steerpike

Quote from: Elemental ElfMuch of Narrativism is about giving people enough wiggle room to do cool things in a story that perhaps the rules do not account for. 4E does not openly give much of that power to players (their experience is vastly more gamist) but rather all the power is given to the DM. I'm not claiming that 4E is on the same level of Narrativism as FATE or Exalted or Marvel Heroic. However, when you venture outside of the 4E's core concept (fight/kill monsters) the game forces DM's to be Narrativist because everything is left completely vague. It forces the DM to think of player actions in terms of their story and how fast/slow they want the players to accomplish their tasks rather than relying on the arbitrary rule/guidelines that Gamist and Simmulationist games focus on.

Well, me might just have to disagree on this one.  I still don't think 4E is remotely narrativistic; I think the edition basically assumes that the players aren't really interested in anything other than defeating monsters and getting treasure, or rather (at the very lest) it assumes that those things are the central, overriding purpose of the game, rather than telling a story or collaborating on a narrative and bringing generic themes or "human" issues to the table.  Giving the DM and players pretty much 0 aid in constructing a narrative, no narative mechanics, and minimal help in world-building while aggressively concentrating on combat mechanics, grids, and loot seems like the opposite of narrativism to me.  I certainly don't see why 3.X (or even earlier editions) isn't "narrativist" by this standard; it's hardly as if the implied setting were super intrusive in 3.X, or as if the fact that they provided pricing for ten foot poles and lanterns alongside weapons in the Player's Handbook somehow destroyed the DM's storyelling powers.  No edition of D&D that I'm aware of has included any kind of mechanics that I'd characterize as properly "narrativist" in any concrete sense.  The extent to which a D&D game is or isn't "narrativist" is pretty much dependent on the DM, not the system, as I understand the term.  Perhaps this is just semantics.  Once again, I don't really think that 4E or D&D general not be especially narrativist is a weakness, I just don't think 4E privileges storytelling and narrative in any way - I think it pretty clearly privileges tactical grid-based combat at every juncture that it can.

I'm also not sure that a Gamist/Simulationist game necessarily involves "arbitrary" guidelines to accomplish tasks, but I'm not sure I understand exactly what you mean by this.  Frankly, I'm not that enamoured by GNS in general; it's a useful model at times, but it can be taken too far.

After giving it some thought, I think the issue is that I am allowing my own experiences and preferences with the system to color my perception. I have a habit of adding in a lot of Narrativist elements into every game I play. When I see vague rules, I use that as a justification for adding all kinds of Narrativist elements. I whole heartedly encourage people do do crazy things all the time simply because it is fun. When I think back to the way others have DMed the 4E, I realize there have been a few who were much less Narrativst in nature and the game felt like, well, a board game with some talking elements added in. The reason I don't say 3.x is Narrativist is because the strict rules for monster creation often felt like the designers were imposing their vision upon my game. If I want to make a Giant, why does he need all these feats and skills? Why does a character need a craft skill to make armor or a perform skill to sing a song?* Simmulationism sometimes feels like a burden when all you want to do is delve into the story or the fight.


*I do think there should some kind of guideline for making things like Houses, Beer, Armor, Boats, Food or performing but I don't really think skills are the correct route for such things. I've always preferred Non-Weapon Proficiencies for such things, most especially when you are not dealing with items of a magical nature.

It is interesting seeing how this is viewed from both te OP perspective and the responses in the differences of 3x to 4E and the pathfinderf variant.  Many of you have also asked, in different ways, my question, in that systems are built to support certain settings and certain types of games.

One of my biggest quibbles was simply that while no version of D&D really does a ton of things well, to me 4e's codifications took away what flexibility in terms of game type and system type 3x and pathfinder had and pretty much made a system built for a very narrow gauge of setting and game type.  It's going to be big, heroic, the players will get the cool stuff they want (wish lists), with very quick leaving the world of mortals far behind.

I guess I look at this from a different standpoint than many, but I did like the craziness of creativity that surrounded 3x, broken as it might have been in some ways, better than the ironclad similarities of 4E.  I do agree that 4E was easier to run and easy to learn, since there were less sub games and the classes were more similar.  I frankly found 3x lacking in some simulationist areas, so 4E was worse for me, but again, I think without the gaming background it was an easier game to learn. 

I am quite happy with the op and the questions and the good hearted way the discussion has been joined in.  I just got back from 4 days of travel, but felt the need to chime in.   

Quote from: Elemental ElfThe reason I don't say 3.x is Narrativist is because the strict rules for monster creation often felt like the designers were imposing their vision upon my game. If I want to make a Giant, why does he need all these feats and skills? Why does a character need a craft skill to make armor or a perform skill to sing a song?* Simmulationism sometimes feels like a burden when all you want to do is delve into the story or the fight.

I definitely agree with you here.  I don't think 3.X is terribly narrativistic at all, either; it's also not really all that great at simulation compared to some systems out there (say, Vreeg's Guildschool, or Rolemaster or something), really, but it's better than some systems at creating some feeling of realism.  Creating a 4E hack, I think it'd be quiet possible to layer in some grit and verisimilitude.

Quote from: sparkletwist
For what it's worth, I agree with Steerpike, too.

I also agree with the rather limited utility of GNS terminology. It's fine to throw around the words "narrativist," "simulationist" and "gamist" when you want to talk about the general categories that your game play could fall into, but the detailed analyses that originally spawned the whole theory don't actually make any sense... so it's hard to say much more than that and make any sense. (It's also why I always put the terms in scare quotes when I do use them)

So can we get back to bashing 4th edition? :D

Or, as we might put it, what kind of game are you wanting to play?  What is the ideal setting?  What is the speed of growth you want?  Since you want classes, where do you want them balanced?  Combat?  Exploration?  Adventuring?  Social growth and interaction (as Steerpike mentioned with the skills system)?  Application of treasure resources?  Do you want groups to gain exp equally, or do you want a more varied group option? How powerful do you want magic to be inside and outside of combat?  Are we expecting to go the hero/superhero/epic route, or do we want some level of grit and relationship between the PCs and the populace?

I just want to understand better from the ground up.

I liked 4e when I first read about it, and bought the books... I guess the more I played it, the more nostalgic I became for earlier editions. I came back to my home town and played with guys I had played with since 2e, guys that had always been big on role-play, intrigue, and plot, and found the game had turned into a hack-and-slash, filled with player-vs-dm mindset. And some of them knew it had happened, but couldn't shake it. The game somehow felt so mechanical, so gamey, that an inevitable sense of player entitlement and XP grind had developed.

And while I've sometimes had fun with 4e at its best, some of the experiences were ultimately unsatisfying. Partly this may be a result of presentation, and partly I think it had has to do with the basic mindset the game was driven to--which is not terribly unlike having the DM as the computer running a CRPG for the players.

I can appreciate the game that recognizes it is a game, not a simulation of reality. But I found 4e had somehow created a shift in the play style of a group I'd gamed with for years, and not one I really liked.

And I quickly grew to hate skill challenges.

Quote from: Elemental Elf*I do think there should some kind of guideline for making things like Houses, Beer, Armor, Boats, Food or performing but I don't really think skills are the correct route for such things. I've always preferred Non-Weapon Proficiencies for such things, most especially when you are not dealing with items of a magical nature.

I think that's a pretty interesting point.  I can sort of see both sides; on the one hand it's nice to distinguish between master craftsmen (your Eorlund Gray Manes and Donal Noyes and Telchars) and apprentices, and skill ranks seem like a good way to do that.  On the other hand, from a practical perspective and given the usual DCs provided, is there much point in sinking more than about 10 ranks into a Craft or Profession skill, at most?  Probably not.  Then again, splitting things that are usually considered "skills" into Skills and Proficiencies is a bit clumsy and overly-complicated.  On the other hand again, it might be cool if all characters had a selection of "non-weapon proficiencies" that didn't have to compete with their other Skills.  So a Fighter who previously had to choose whether to put ranks into Climb or Craft now wouldn't have to; he'd just pick the Armourer profession, or whatever, at 1st level, and then select his skills.

One other solution would be to design a campaign and features within it that make use of Craft and Profession skills more.  Like if the characters are in a gritty mercenary campaign along the lines of The Black Company or something from A Song of Ice and Fire, having someone with Profession (Cooking) to feed large numbers of troops, Profession (soldier) to set up camp and defences, Craft (carpentry) to make siege weapons, Craft (ships) when building a naval fleet, Craft (weapons) and Craft (armour) to produce and repair equipment, not to mention the slightly "crafty" skills like Heal, Survival, and Handle Animal etc would all be pretty useful, and one could imagine setting high DCs (to justify a large amount of ranks) for tasks that require assisting large groups of people quickly, or performing work under challenging conditions.  Arguably this is what leaving skills like Craft/Profession in as skills that can be improved accomplishes.  Some groups - your hack and slash dungeon-crawling types - can just ignore the Craft skills entirely, but in a different GM's game having a craft might be seen as much more useful.

Quote from: Steerpike

Quote from: Elemental Elf*I do think there should some kind of guideline for making things like Houses, Beer, Armor, Boats, Food or performing but I don't really think skills are the correct route for such things. I've always preferred Non-Weapon Proficiencies for such things, most especially when you are not dealing with items of a magical nature.

I think that's a pretty interesting point.  I can sort of see both sides; on the one hand it's nice to distinguish between master craftsmen (your Eorlund Gray Manes and Donal Noyes and Telchars) and apprentices, and skill ranks seem like a good way to do that.  On the other hand, from a practical perspective and given the usual DCs provided, is there much point in sinking more than about 10 ranks into a Craft or Profession skill, at most?  Probably not.  Then again, splitting things that are usually considered "skills" into Skills and Proficiencies is a bit clumsy and overly-complicated.  On the other hand again, it might be cool if all characters had a selection of "non-weapon proficiencies" that didn't have to compete with their other Skills.  So a Fighter who previously had to choose whether to put ranks into Climb or Craft now wouldn't have to; he'd just pick the Armourer profession, or whatever, at 1st level, and then select his skills.

One other solution would be to design a campaign and features within it that make use of Craft and Profession skills more.  Like if the characters are in a gritty mercenary campaign along the lines of The Black Company or something from A Song of Ice and Fire, having someone with Profession (Cooking) to feed large numbers of troops, Profession (soldier) to set up camp and defences, Craft (carpentry) to make siege weapons, Craft (ships) when building a naval fleet, Craft (weapons) and Craft (armour) to produce and repair equipment, not to mention the slightly "crafty" skills like Heal, Survival, and Handle Animal etc would all be pretty useful, and one could imagine setting high DCs (to justify a large amount of ranks) for tasks that require assisting large groups of people quickly, or performing work under challenging conditions.  Arguably this is what leaving skills like Craft/Profession in as skills that can be improved accomplishes.  Some groups - your hack and slash dungeon-crawling types - can just ignore the Craft skills entirely, but in a different GM's game having a craft might be seen as much more useful.

I guess that is sort of the direction I am looking at when I want to design a system, what kind of game do you want to play.  I also like it when there are mundane skills available to match the class ideals and to fit a class into a local ideal, such as a Chevalier or Rake.

To me, the most salient argument against skill ranks is how much two characters can diverge, and how difficult this can make game balance. Even at first level, one character may have a -2 modifier to the controlling stat and no ranks, giving a -2 to the roll. Another character may have +5 from their stat, a rank in the skill, and, let's say, some kind of racial/class/whatever bonus giving a further +2, resulting in +8. This is divergence of 10; i.e., half of a d20, and this is at level 1. (It's even worse in Pathfinder with the +3 to class skills!)

Of course, the problem can be mitigated in play by giving each character a chance to shine at their own unique talents and letting the party succeed as a whole based on the roll of the best member, but this is just circumventing it, and the actual mathematical issue is still there. Systems like Pathfinder's chase mechanics where every character in the chase has to pass certain checks at certain DCs tend to completely fall apart.

Quote from: sparkletwist
To me, the most salient argument against skill ranks is how much two characters can diverge, and how difficult this can make game balance. Even at first level, one character may have a -2 modifier to the controlling stat and no ranks, giving a -2 to the roll. Another character may have +5 from their stat, a rank in the skill, and, let's say, some kind of racial/class/whatever bonus giving a further +2, resulting in +8. This is divergence of 10; i.e., half of a d20, and this is at level 1. (It's even worse in Pathfinder with the +3 to class skills!)

Of course, the problem can be mitigated in play by giving each character a chance to shine at their own unique talents and letting the party succeed as a whole based on the roll of the best member, but this is just circumventing it, and the actual mathematical issue is still there. Systems like Pathfinder's chase mechanics where every character in the chase has to pass certain checks at certain DCs tend to completely fall apart.

well, that is always the cost/benefit. 
when you play a game that opens up individualizing the character, you also lose the ability to balance them as easily across most dimensions.  in some ways, it can be great.  I have obviously taken this to ridiculous lengths.  But I also see your point, and it is a real decision for a GM in how they want to balance the game.

In theory I like the idea of assigning skill points, but as Sparkle just points out, the divergence in D&D was often too high. As was the case for most math in D&D... The level system itself creates such an enormous gap in power between high level and low level characters. If you look at the system like Shadowrun (speaking 3e, which is what I played the most), where skills typically run from 1 to 6, with 7 being near miraculous. And sure, someone with five dice is way better than someone with three, but the absolute variance is not so great.

Quote from: Matt Larkin (author)
In theory I like the idea of assigning skill points, but as Sparkle just points out, the divergence in D&D was often too high. As was the case for most math in D&D... The level system itself creates such an enormous gap in power between high level and low level characters. If you look at the system like Shadowrun (speaking 3e, which is what I played the most), where skills typically run from 1 to 6, with 7 being near miraculous. And sure, someone with five dice is way better than someone with three, but the absolute variance is not so great.

granularity, baby.
The solution to many problems.

Quote from: sparkletwistOf course, the problem can be mitigated in play by giving each character a chance to shine at their own unique talents and letting the party succeed as a whole based on the roll of the best member, but this is just circumventing it, and the actual mathematical issue is still there. Systems like Pathfinder's chase mechanics where every character in the chase has to pass certain checks at certain DCs tend to completely fall apart.

This can definitely be a problem, although in my experience in practice there's a core cluster of skills - Acrobatics, Perception, Climb - that most people tend to sink at least a few points into whether or not they have a lot of points to spend.  Still, it requires careful DMing.  When I DM Pathfinder (which is a lot) I tend to think on two levels when setting DCs.

The first is a sort of "whole party" set of DCs for things like circumventing obstacles in a chase, scaling a cliff in the wilderness, jumping a chasm in a series of caverns, making saves against weather, keeping balanced across a slippery ledge, and that kind of thing.  I usually set such DCs in the 10-20 range, which means that everyone - even those with no ranks in a skill - have a decent chance of succeeding, especially with liberal use of "aid another."  Certain characters who are really good at the things in question are going to breeze through these challenges, but that's OK with me; there's still a sense of tension (often there are consequences for failure), and in fact those who are skilled often get to help those who aren't, creating a nice feeling of group cooperation.  I also try to include multiple paths round obstacles wherever possible so that different skills could be used to circumvent a given obstacle, and I try to include environmental details that, if utilized, lower the DCs of checks.  Like, for example, I might put in my notes something like "jumping the rift requires a DC 20 Acrobatics check, but if the characters get clever and use the vines to swing across, lower it to DC 10."

The second type of check I think of as a specialist check, the sort of check that the whole party doesn't have to make, only a single character, in which case the disparity between characters isn't a negative - in fact, you want a disparity between characters for these checks, because you reward the character who sunk time and skill points into the appropriate skills.  I tend to make these DCs much, much higher, because only one player needs to overcome them.  Locks, traps, knowledge checks, deciphering runes, tight gaps with treasure or a lever or something on the other side, that sort of thing.  For these checks, I think there are actually some advantages in having a big divergence between characters, and a system without such disparities would be less satisfying.  If everyone can do more or less everything more or less adequately, well, we're back at homogeneity (and boredom).  No one feels special.

@Steerpike, I agree. That's a good way to handle it.

I also think it's not too bad of a solution, although I'd like to add two caveats:

- This generally requires designing the adventure around the party's capabilities: the DCs of the "whole party" situations have to be kept in check, and the "specialist" situations have to be set up so that they're tied to a skill that someone in the party actually has. I don't think this is a huge problem for most people, as there is still a lot of flexibility and possibility to include organic challenges, but ardent "simulationists" who like to insist their world is completely objective and detached from the players may have a problem with it. It might also start to become a problem as the party rises in level and the general level of challenge goes up-- it feels a bit silly to be breaking into the higher tiers of play and still be dealing with "mundane" DC 10 challenges, and the fact that they're still trouble for someone can turn what was once a feeling of cooperation into a feeling of dragging around dead weight.

- Nothing you've suggested actually necessitates the use of a skill rank system. It requires a system where there is some disparity in capability, but I agree with you that some is needed so that characters can feel good about what they've invested in. However, I think the way that the amount of disparity can be both quite wide and quite open-ended is still not a good thing. Rather, a fairly simple approach that could nonetheless work well enough would be to decide the amount of disparity you think is "good" between being trained and untrained, and make that the standard. Then, your two situations would work as follows:

• "Whole party" checks: Trained characters pass easily, untrained characters are challenged.
• "Specialist" checks: Trained characters are challenged, untrained characters don't have a chance.

... which is essentially how they work anyway. :grin:

As an aside, I sort of dislike those "core cluster" skills because, if everybody needs them, they're just a point tax, and it's a regressive tax at that: Rogues and Wizards usually have skill points to spare, while meanwhile Fighters are already sort of screwed due to their low skill points. So if there are skills they simply must put ranks into or they'll risk being pushed even further down into uselessness, it prevents them from diversifying and sort of reinforces the already large problem that Fighters are simply not good at anything other than dealing damage.

Some interesting points!

Quote from: sparkletwistThis generally requires designing the adventure around the party's capabilities: the DCs of the "whole party" situations have to be kept in check, and the "specialist" situations have to be set up so that they're tied to a skill that someone in the party actually has. I don't think this is a huge problem for most people, as there is still a lot of flexibility and possibility to include organic challenges, but ardent "simulationists" who like to insist their world is completely objective and detached from the players may have a problem with it. It might also start to become a problem as the party rises in level and the general level of challenge goes up-- it feels a bit silly to be breaking into the higher tiers of play and still be dealing with "mundane" DC 10 challenges, and the fact that they're still trouble for someone can turn what was once a feeling of cooperation into a feeling of dragging around dead weight.

This often ocurs to me as well (the "tailor-made" thing).  What I sometimes try to do is to include challenges that I know the party cannot deal with, and then include NPCs somewhere who can help them.  But even this isn't really pure "simulationism" in the classic sense of the term.

I do gradually scale the DCs of the "general" challenges, because as I said most PCs (in my experience) usually try to pick up a few ranks of Climb, Acrobatics, Perception, and possibly Swim as time goes on - these core physical skills end up being used by almost everyone at some point.  Spells also help to mitigate these problems, too - like, once a caster gets Fly they can just flit over chasms or rivers or pits, once they get Gaseous Form tight areas aren't really a problem, etc.  It requires thought and careful tinkering with DCs, but this is sort of what the DM's job is supposed to be.

Quote from: sparkletwistNothing you've suggested actually necessitates the use of a skill rank system. It requires a system where there is some disparity in capability, but I agree with you that some is needed so that characters can feel good about what they've invested in. However, I think the way that the amount of disparity can be both quite wide and quite open-ended is still not a good thing. Rather, a fairly simple approach that could nonetheless work well enough would be to decide the amount of disparity you think is "good" between being trained and untrained, and make that the standard. Then, your two situations would work as follows:

   "Whole party" checks: Trained characters pass easily, untrained characters are challenged.
   "Specialist" checks: Trained characters are challenged, untrained characters don't have a chance.

... which is essentially how they work anyway.

There are definitely alternatives to a skill rank system, but I still don't like a simple profiency trained vs. untrained system as much as a skill rank system, because otherwise once you're trained in a skill you never get any sense of improvement in that skill.  In a system where you improve at everything else wth time and experience - combat, casting spells, saving throws, toughness - why should skills (you know, those things that in real life actually improve with practice and experience) not be improvable?  Does it really make sense for your HP to improve with experience but your skills as a tracker, woodsman, healer, climber, or sneak to stay static?  I want to distinguish between an acolyte thief new to the guild and the master who can melt into the shadows, or the seasoned man of the mountains who can glance at some tracks and tell you everything about their makers and a still-green scout.  I want to distinguish between the quack apothecary with a few rudiments of medicine and the master healer, or the apprentice blacksmith and the grizzled dwarven ubersmith.  A strict trained/untrained system doesn't allow this; all of the "novice" characters in the above exampels are trained, they're just not masters yet.

Even putting this common sense/simulationist line of thinking aside, I like the feeling of PCs being able to take on a series of escalating non-combat challenges of increasing difficulty and dering-do as they level.  In a straight proficient/non-proficient system, where you either are traiend in a skill or not and there's no numeric range/spectrum/granularity, once you've acquired a skill you're suddenly capable of taking on any challenge germane to that skill, with no room for upward mobility.  

I'm not sure I really understand your unease about a wide/"open-ended" disparity in abilities between classes.  There's a very wide disparity in spell-casting ability between a fighter and a wizard, and a slightly-smaller-but-still-wide disparity in spellcasting ability between a ranger and a wizard.  Likewise there's a wide disparity in healing ability between a wizard and a cleric, and a slightly-smaller-but-still-wide disparity in healing ability between a bard and a cleric.  So what's wrong with having a wide disaprity in lockpicking and stealth ability between a fighter and a rogue?  Or a wide disparity in tracking and woodsmanship between a ranger and a paladin?

Quote from: sparkletwistAs an aside, I sort of dislike those "core cluster" skills because, if everybody needs them, they're just a point tax, and it's a regressive tax at that: Rogues and Wizards usually have skill points to spare, while meanwhile Fighters are already sort of screwed due to their low skill points. So if there are skills they simply must put ranks into or they'll risk being pushed even further down into uselessness, it prevents them from diversifying and sort of reinforces the already large problem that Fighters are simply not good at anything other than dealing damage.

Well, to me, part of the appeal of being a Rogue is having skill points to spare.  The skills are one of the mechanical draws of the class, like a Barbarian's high HD, or the Fighter's many feats, or a Sorcerer's spontaneous casting.  It's also a major draw of playing a Human in 3.X instead of the more exotic races.

The nice thing about skill ranks is they don't demand you put all of your skill points into the same skills at every level.  What I mean by the core cluster idea is that, as time goes on, most players occasionally dump a point or two into those core skills, not that everyone has to level them like mad to keep up with the exacting demands of the "skill tax."  And the nice thing about 3.X is that Fighters and the like can diversify in part by taking non-Fighter levels - you know, the old "dip" approach.  Doubtless this approach has its abuses, but it kind of makes sense that a clunky Fighter who finds that his martial training isn't sufficient in the adventuring life picks up a few pointers from the Rogue or Ranger, or a few spells from the Wizard, represented by a level in those classes.

Quote from: SteerpikeI like the feeling of PCs being able to take on a series of escalating non-combat challenges of increasing difficulty and dering-do as they level.  In a straight proficient/non-proficient system, where you either are traiend in a skill or not and there's no numeric range/spectrum/granularity, once you've acquired a skill you're suddenly capable of taking on any challenge germane to that skill, with no room for upward mobility.

Well, that's true, but I don't think proficiency necessarily needs to come with a static bonus. That's the 4e way of doing it and is one way of doing it, but that's not the only way of doing it. You could also have proficiency add your level or half your level or some other scaling bonus, too, if you wanted to. Another option would be multiple levels of proficiency (Trained/Adept/Expert, or whatever) to allow some semblance of "ranks" without the full complexity of using skill ranks. Both of these would allow for a sense of improvement while still making the ranges of talents the characters may have at a given level more predictable for the GM (e.g., you're either 0 [or Z] or X, not any number between 0 and X), and thus making it easier to set DCs.
 

Quote from: SteerpikeSo what's wrong with having a wide disaprity in lockpicking and stealth ability between a fighter and a rogue?  Or a wide disparity in tracking and woodsmanship between a ranger and a paladin?

Nothing, but what's wrong is that we're talking about the skill system, which all classes have access to. If you want this to be a Fighter/Rogue thing or a Ranger/Paladin thing, then these should be class features, not skills. (The examples you gave about spell casting and healing ability and such were all class features, too)

Quote from: SteerpikeWell, to me, part of the good part about being a Rogue is having skill points to spare.  The skills are one of the mechanical draws of the class

I understand your reasoning, but I personally sort of dislike that "having skills" is supposedly a class feature. It just makes Fighters suck more, because they can't have skills or they start to intrude on the Rogue's role, or something. Like I said, it just seems punishing to the Fighter. Multiclassing is one solution, but all it says is, "Yes, Fighters do suck, if you don't want to suck, be something else."

To be remotely on topic for a moment, Xeviat, in whatever houserules you create, please give Fighters nice things. :grin:

Quote from: Steerpike

Quote from: sparkletwistAs an aside, I sort of dislike those "core cluster" skills because, if everybody needs them, they're just a point tax, and it's a regressive tax at that: Rogues and Wizards usually have skill points to spare, while meanwhile Fighters are already sort of screwed due to their low skill points. So if there are skills they simply must put ranks into or they'll risk being pushed even further down into uselessness, it prevents them from diversifying and sort of reinforces the already large problem that Fighters are simply not good at anything other than dealing damage.

Well, to me, part of the appeal of being a Rogue is having skill points to spare.  The skills are one of the mechanical draws of the class, like a Barbarian's high HD, or the Fighter's many feats, or a Sorcerer's spontaneous casting.  It's also a major draw of playing a Human in 3.X instead of the more exotic races.

In broad strokes, you are right however after 13 years of experience with the system we all know that - in general - the Rogue's skill points are more meaningful than the Fighter's Feats because they touch on every aspect of the game, from combat, to RP, to exploration. The Fighter's feats only shine in combat and, after mid-level, they are generally pointless as those around you far outstrip your meager capabilities. :(

Quote from: SteerpikeThe nice thing about skill ranks is they don't demand you put all of your skill points into the same skills at every level.  What I mean by the core cluster idea is that, as time goes on, most players occasionally dump a point or two into those core skills, not that everyone has to level them like mad to keep up with the exacting demands of the "skill tax."  And the nice thing about 3.X is that Fighters and the like can diversify in part by taking non-Fighter levels - you know, the old "dip" approach.  Doubtless this approach has its abuses, but it kind of makes sense that a clunky Fighter who finds that his martial training isn't sufficient in the adventuring life picks up a few pointers from the Rogue or Ranger, or a few spells from the Wizard, represented by a level in those classes.

But you have so many fewer skill points in Pathfinder than 3.x, which disincentives people from spreading their skill points around. Doubly so for classes where INT isn't a priority and/or classes that receive few skill points per level. Putting a few skill points into a new skill is generally pointless as you level up as you will never come close to matching a specialist. By your own admission, challenges focusing on skills that are not being specialized in are tailored downward so as to accommodate lower rolls. There's no need to put spread your meager skills around because challenges are, generally, going to be tailored around you.

Multiclassing to get more skills is such an inelegant solution to the problem. Why should my Paladin be forced to level dip into Bard to keep four skills both classes share at max rank? It's a clunky way of solving a real problem in the game.

Quote from: sparkletwistYou could also have proficiency add your level or half your level or some other scaling bonus, too, if you wanted to.

Isn't this basically the same thing as skill ranks/points, but more rigid?  In Pathfinder/3.X you can just keep putting 1 point into all the skills you gained at first level, effectively allowing you to add your level bonus to your skills.  What's the real advantage to just adding your level or half your level over skill points?

Quote from: sparkletwistAnother option would be multiple levels of proficiency (Trained/Adept/Expert, or whatever) to allow some semblance of "ranks" without the full complexity of using skill ranks.

I think this is totally an acceptable alternative.  Still, in my experience, setting DCs isn't really that hard.  The only time that the big disparities become much of an issue is in the upper levels (10+), at which point the PCs in your average 3.X game usually have access to enough magic items, NPC support, spells (to either circumvent obstacles entirely or provide stat bonuses), and other resources that help with these things.

Quote from: sparkletwist...what's wrong is that we're talking about the skill system, which all classes have access to. If you want this to be a Fighter/Rogue thing or a Ranger/Paladin thing, then these should be class features, not skills. (The examples you gave about spell casting and healing ability and such were all class features, too).  I understand your reasoning, but I personally sort of dislike that "having skills" is supposedly a class feature. It just makes Fighters suck more, because they can't have skills or they start to intrude on the Rogue's role, or something. Like I said, it just seems punishing to the Fighter. Multiclassing is one solution, but all it says is, "Yes, Fighters do suck, if you don't want to suck, be something else."

I guess I see your point, but by the same token everyone has Feats, but Fighters get way more of them (close to double depending on your class) in exactly the same way that Rogues get more Skill points.  Everyone has a base attack bonus, but the Fighter has a better progression than many other classes (in 3.X, anyway).  Everyone has HP, but the Barbarian has way more of it.  There are lots of features that everyone has that some classes have more of.  It's true that spells are class features, but 7/11 Pathfinder core classes (8/11 if you count the Rogue Talents "Minor Magic" or "Major Magic") have spellcasting ability, so it's hardly a unique class feature.  And because every character effectively has "access" to every class at all times - multiclassing is free and encouraged, especially in Pathfinder where the Paladin and Monk can freely multiclass, and you can even retrain (http://www.d20pfsrd.com/basics-ability-scores/more-character-options/retraining) your levels, abilities, and skills - I think this criticism is mitigated pretty substantially compared to something like 4E or other systems where your class is the one you're stuck with.

I agree, though, that as a class the 3.X Fighter needs more unique and exciting class features (i.e. beyond its numerous Feats) to make it attractive as a class to pursue "straight through."  4E's martial power solution kind of has its heart in the right place, but I don't like the implementation.  Personally, if I were rewriting the class, I might have the upper-level fighter gain various leadership-based, stronghold-building type abilities.

Quote from: Elemental ElfIn broad strokes, you are right however after 13 years of experience with the system we all know that - in general - the Rogue's skill points are more meaningful than the Fighter's Feats because they touch on every aspect of the game, from combat, to RP, to exploration.

I'll again agree that the Fighter probably still needs work.  Again, I prefer Paladins, Rangers, Barbarians, and Monks (all of whom except the Paladin get 4-6 skill points per level - and the Paladin's buttload of fairly unique class features kind of mitigates his lack of skills) to Fighters, and I rarely see players pursue pure-class Fighters.  3.X/Pathfinder are definitely not perfect, and the Fighter is one of the most glaring flaws.

Quote from: Elemental ElfThe Fighter's feats only shine in combat

Perhaps his Fighter-only bonus feats, but there's absolutely nothing stopping a Fighter from choosing any of the plethora of non-combat Feats (from Story Feats (http://www.d20pfsrd.com/feats/story-feats) to any of the many skill-boosting Feats to other Feats like Squire, Leadership, Rugged Northerner, Endurance, etc) for his regular Feats.

Quote from: Elemental ElfPutting a few skill points into a new skill is generally pointless as you level up as you will never come close to matching a specialist.

Why do you need to match a specialist?  I'm just talking about sinking the odd point into Acrobatics or Climb to help out with adventuring, like when you come up on a cliff or a narrow walkway or whatever.

Quote from: Elemental ElfMulticlassing to get more skills is such an inelegant solution to the problem. Why should my Paladin be forced to level dip into Bard to keep four skills both classes share at max rank? It's a clunky way of solving a real problem in the game.

I think it depends.  It can be clumsy and clunky, or it can be handled as part of the organic development of a character.  I think that overall multiclassing is more helpful than harmful to character development, both mechanically and from a roleplaying standpoint.

For the Paladin, putting your Int in the 12-13 range (also useful for Feats) and being Human or Half-Elf could as-easily give you 4 points/level without having to dip into Bard.

Quote from: Steerpike

Quote from: sparkletwistYou could also have proficiency add your level or half your level or some other scaling bonus, too, if you wanted to.

Isn't this basically the same thing as skill ranks/points, but more rigid?  In Pathfinder/3.X you can just keep putting 1 point into all the skills you gained at first level, effectively allowing you to add your level bonus to your skills.  What's the real advantage to just adding your level or half your level over skill points?

Simpler to track and, if you give half-level bonus to non-trained skills, makes those skills more useful as you level up.

Quote from: Steerpike

Quote from: sparkletwistAnother option would be multiple levels of proficiency (Trained/Adept/Expert, or whatever) to allow some semblance of "ranks" without the full complexity of using skill ranks.

I think this is totally an acceptable alternative.  Still, in my experience, setting DCs isn't really that hard.  The only time that the big disparities become much of an issue is in the upper levels (10+), at which point the PCs in your average 3.X game usually have access to enough magic items, NPC support, spells (to either circumvent obstacles entirely or provide stat bonuses), and other resources that help with these things.

The game generally starts to break down at 10+ due to the collective weight of all the ways PCs can reasonably circumvent challenges but that's a whole different issue.

Quote from: Steerpike

Quote from: sparkletwist...what's wrong is that we're talking about the skill system, which all classes have access to. If you want this to be a Fighter/Rogue thing or a Ranger/Paladin thing, then these should be class features, not skills. (The examples you gave about spell casting and healing ability and such were all class features, too).  I understand your reasoning, but I personally sort of dislike that "having skills" is supposedly a class feature. It just makes Fighters suck more, because they can't have skills or they start to intrude on the Rogue's role, or something. Like I said, it just seems punishing to the Fighter. Multiclassing is one solution, but all it says is, "Yes, Fighters do suck, if you don't want to suck, be something else."

I guess I see your point, but by the same token everyone has Feats, but Fighters get way more of them (close to double depending on your class) iun exactly the same way that Rogues get more Skill points.  Everyone has a base attack bonus, but the Fighter has a better progression than many other classes (in 3.X, anyway).  Everyone has HP, but the Barbarian has way more of it.  There are lots of features that everyone has that some classes have more of.  It's true that spells are class features, but 7/11 Pathfinder core classes (8/11 if you count the Rogue Talents "Minor Magic" or "Major Magic") have spellcasting ability, so it's hardly a unique class feature.  And because every character effectively has "access" to every class at all times - multiclassing is free and encouraged, especially in Pathfinder where the Paladin and Monk can freely multiclass, and you can even retrain (http://www.d20pfsrd.com/basics-ability-scores/more-character-options/retraining) your levels, abilities, and skills - I think this criticism is mitigated pretty substantially compared to something like 4E or other systems where your class is the one you're stuck with.

I agree, though, that as a class the 3.X Fighter needs more unique and exciting class features (i.e. beyond its numerous Feats) to make it attractive as a class to pursue "straight through."  4E's martial power solution kind of has its heart in the right place, but I don't like the implementation.  Personally, if I were rewriting the class, I might have the upper-level fighter gain various leadership-based, stronghold-building type abilities.

I'd add the stronghold aspects in (like old school D&D) and I would also make the Fighter into the ultimate Weapons Master, meaning that the Fighter is the class to go to if you want to seamlessly shift between different weapons with ease and utilize them in highly effective ways. There was a cool power called Weapon Master's Strike in 4E that gave the Fighters the ability to sheathe and draw a weapon as a free action before attacking. The power then listed 4 effects based on the kind of weapon you were using (Axes do more damage, Maces move the enemy, Heavy Blades gave you a bonus to AC from attacks made by that enemy and Polearms allowed you to get an Opportunity Attack when if the enemy 5 foot stepped away). The idea that the Fighter constantly switches between different styles of combat really appeals to me. It gives the Fighter a theme and a set of aptitudes that no other class can Xerox. You can kind of replicate this with Fighter Bonus feats but it isn't as elegant or as easy to achieve.

Quote from: Steerpike

Quote from: Elemental ElfIn broad strokes, you are right however after 13 years of experience with the system we all know that - in general - the Rogue's skill points are more meaningful than the Fighter's Feats because they touch on every aspect of the game, from combat, to RP, to exploration.

I'll again agree that the Fighter probably still needs work.  Again, I prefer Paladins, Rangers, Barbarians, and Monks (all of whom except the Paladin get 4-6 skill points per level - and the Paladin's buttload of fairly unique class features kind of mitigates his lack of skills) to Fighters, and I rarely see players pursue pure-class Fighters.  3.X/Pathfinder are definitely not perfect, and the Fighter is one of the most glaring flaws.

I think Pathfinder did an amazing job with the Paladin. The class is so much better in PF. The Barbarian and the Ranger had fewer changes but the changes did improve their lot in life. Sadly, the Fighter is broken. Even Pathfinder's wondrous additions didn't amount to much in the end. The class really needs to be completely redesigned from the ground up.

Quote from: Steerpike

Quote from: Elemental ElfThe Fighter's feats only shine in combat

Perhaps his Fighter-only bonus feats, but there's absolutely nothing stopping a Fighter from choosing any of the plethora of non-combat Feats (from Story Feats (http://www.d20pfsrd.com/feats/story-feats) to any of the many skill-boosting Feats to other Feats like Squire, Leadership, Rugged Northerner, Endurance, etc) for his regular Feats.

Any character can take those same feats and none of those really improve his ability to interact with the world outside of combat with the same diversity as a Rogue. :(

Quote from: Steerpike

Quote from: Elemental ElfPutting a few skill points into a new skill is generally pointless as you level up as you will never come close to matching a specialist.

Why do you need to match a specialist?  I'm just talking about sinking the odd point into Acrobatics or Climb to help out with adventuring, like when you come up on a cliff or a narrow walkway or whatever.

Putting a point or two into Acrobatics or Climb for anyone wearing Medium or Heavy Armor is fairly pointless as the check penalty far outweighs the messily point or two you are sinking into the skill. The only way to surmount the negatives is to either remove your armor (terrible idea in a dungeon) or become a specialist in that skill. :(

Quote from: Steerpike

Quote from: Elemental ElfMulticlassing to get more skills is such an inelegant solution to the problem. Why should my Paladin be forced to level dip into Bard to keep four skills both classes share at max rank? It's a clunky way of solving a real problem in the game.

I think it depends.  It can be clumsy and clunky, or it can be handled as part of the organic development of a character.  I think that overall multiclassing is more helpful than harmful to character development, both mechanically and from a roleplaying standpoint.

You are fundamentally altering the character and his place in the world to pick up a few skills? Seems a bit ham-fisted to me.

Quote from: SteerpikeIsn't this basically the same thing as skill ranks/points, but more rigid?  In Pathfinder/3.X you can just keep putting 1 point into all the skills you gained at first level, effectively allowing you to add your level bonus to your skills.  What's the real advantage to just adding your level or half your level over skill points?

One big advantage is that you can decide to become "level appropriate" at any time and just get there without the point expenditure needed rising dramatically. They're basically the same if you've been putting in skill points since level 1, but to get a +Level bonus at level 10 requires 10 skill points, which a lot of characters simply won't have. (You can argue that it's realistic because of all the training that you haven't been doing, but I'd counter that level is supposed to denote a general rise in ability anyway. I'm also admittedly looking at this from a "gamist"/balance perspective right now, so that's a less important argument to me at the moment.)

Quote from: SteerpikeThe only time that the big disparities become much of an issue is in the upper levels (10+), at which point the PCs in your average 3.X game usually have access to enough magic items, NPC support, spells (to either circumvent obstacles entirely or provide stat bonuses), and other resources that help with these things.

Or to make the disparities really really big. :grin:

Quote from: SteerpikeI guess I see your point, but by the same token everyone has Feats, but Fighters get way more of them (close to double depending on your class) in exactly the same way that Rogues get more Skill points.  Everyone has a base attack bonus, but the Fighter has a better progression than many other classes (in 3.X, anyway).  Everyone has HP, but the Barbarian has way more of it.  There are lots of features that everyone has that some classes have more of.

Ok, but you were talking about how "Rogues should do these things, what's it matter if Fighters can't," which really sounds like it should be a class feature, even if the feature applies to multiple classes, like spells or whatever. If we're going to use a system set up so that Disable Device is pretty much a trap option for Fighters (and it pretty much is) then why even bother having it available?

Quote from: Elemental ElfSimpler to track and, if you give half-level bonus to non-trained skills, makes those skills more useful as you level up.

Yeah, that's true.  I guess I can see the advantage. Still prefer skill ranks  :P but OK.

Quote from: Elemental ElfI'd add the stronghold aspects in (like old school D&D) and I would also make the Fighter into the ultimate Weapons Master, meaning that the Fighter is the class to go to if you want to seamlessly shift between different weapons with ease and utilize them in highly effective ways. There was a cool power called Weapon Master's Strike in 4E that gave the Fighters the ability to sheathe and draw a weapon as a free action before attacking. The power then listed 4 effects based on the kind of weapon you were using (Axes do more damage, Maces move the enemy, Heavy Blades gave you a bonus to AC from attacks made by that enemy and Polearms allowed you to get an Opportunity Attack when if the enemy 5 foot stepped away). The idea that the Fighter constantly switches between different styles of combat really appeals to me. It gives the Fighter a theme and a set of aptitudes that no other class can Xerox. You can kind of replicate this with Fighter Bonus feats but it isn't as elegant or as easy to achieve.

Yeah, these sound like great features - the Fighter needs more unique stuff, for sure.

Quote from: Elemental ElfAny character can take those same feats and none of those really improve his ability to interact with the world outside of combat with the same diversity as a Rogue.

Yeah, that's true, though that's kind of the Rogue's thing.  Maybe the Rogue is just too powerful in combat as well?

Quote from: Elemental ElfPutting a point or two into Acrobatics or Climb for anyone wearing Medium or Heavy Armor is fairly pointless as the check penalty far outweighs the messily point or two you are sinking into the skill. The only way to surmount the negatives is to either remove your armor (terrible idea in a dungeon) or become a specialist in that skill.

...unless you're a Pathfinder Fighter, whose Armour Training decreases check penalties and increases maximum Dexterity.

Quote from: Elemental ElfYou are fundamentally altering the character and his place in the world to pick up a few skills? Seems a bit ham-fisted to me.

It can definitely be ham-fisted, but I think it can also be handled elegantly.  Like, Fafhrd or Conan really make sense as Barbarian/Rogues, for example, more than they would as pure Barbarians or Rogues.  Elric is clearly a Fighter/Wizard.  Multi-classing can work really well when it simultaneously helps a character mechanically and in terms of their concept.  It works less well when it's just a clumsy ability-grab, although explaining such a "strange dip" could provide interesting roleplaying challenges in and of itself.  Like in your example above, with the Paladin, maybe he's taken to singing holy hymns in combat and the player composes some scriptural-sounding incantations to intone during a fight, Pulp Fiction style.

Quote from: sparkletwistOne big advantage is that you can decide to become "level appropriate" at any time and just get there without the point expenditure needed rising dramatically

I'm not sure I'm following.  Are you talking about acquiring new skills, here?

Quote from: sparkltwistOk, but you were talking about how "Rogues should do these things, what's it matter if Fighters can't," which really sounds like it should be a class feature, even if the feature applies to multiple classes, like spells or whatever. If we're going to use a system set up so that Disable Device is pretty much a trap option for Fighters (and it pretty much is) then why even bother having it available?

Because otherwise it discourages multiclassing.  Like, let's say I'm a Rogue who decides to take some levels in Fighter for bonus feats, armour training, and increased HD - maybe I've had too many close calls and want some more toughness, or the group needs a stronger melee combatant, or maybe I just like the idea of being a kind of swashbuckling swordsman and I feel that a Fighter/Rogue best represents this concept.  Let's say I'm a Human, and as a Rogue my Int is my second-best stat (let's say it's a 14).  For my Fighter levels I will get 5 Skill points/level (2 for being a Fighter, 1 for Human, and 2 for my Int).  If Stealth, Disable Device, Sleight of Hand, Use Magic Device, and Escape Artist (or whatever my favorite Rogue-y skills are) are skills that only increase with your Rogue level because they're considered Rogue-only class features, then I can't improve them when I take a level of Fighter, but if Fighters have access to the full skill list like everyone else, I can take my FIghter level and still boost my Rogue skills.

The same thing could be done with a "just add your level" system, but then you either A) have to restrict the number of skills you take to those you have at first level or B) are left with a very weird situation where suddenly a character who was previously totally un-skilled in a given skill abruptly becomes an overnight expert when the acquire Disable Device at 15th level, or something (is this the situation you were describing before?), which apart from being totally implausible goes against the grain of the whole "small improvements over time" concept that levels represent.

EDIT: I will admit that it's possible for the same "overnight expert" thing to occur in a skill rank system, but it's less likely, since most players aren't going to want to dump all their skill points at a given level into a single skill.

Quote from: SteerpikeAre you talking about acquiring new skills, here?

Yes. You hit it later on so I'll just address it there.

Quote from: SteerpikeBecause otherwise it discourages multiclassing. ... If Stealth, Disable Device, Sleight of Hand, Use Magic Device, and Escape Artist (or whatever my favorite Rogue-y skills are) are skills that only increase with your Rogue level because they're considered Rogue-only class features, then I can't improve them when I take a level of Fighter, but if Fighters have access to the full skill list like everyone else, I can take my FIghter level and still boost my Rogue skills.

I don't think what you're describing is really a benefit of the skill system, as such, but rather, a problem with multiclassing.

The fact is that there are plenty of class-feature-ish things that do work like you described that can cause all sorts of problems: falling behind on spell levels by multiclassing out of a casting class, getting screwed on BAB when you try to multiclass fractional BAB classes, and, in general, the common problem that what you get at level 1 of some other class not being a very good trade vs. what you get for level N+1 of your current class. So, I think the solution is to make it so that multiclassing doesn't have these problems.

Way back on page 1 of this thread I opined that the 4th edition approach to multiclassing where you can pick and choose class features and hopefully end up with something cohesive and capable for your level is actually a pretty decent approach. (4e then broke it in actual execution, but that's no surprise) But, anyway, if you could pick and choose class features instead of entire class levels, then you could take whatever "multiclass feat" or pick off a power list or whatever if you wanted a certain Rogue power, and you could just get it, while not sacrificing other stuff that is essential to your progression in your main class.

Quote from: Steerpikea very weird situation where suddenly a character who was previously totally un-skilled in a given skill abruptly becomes an overnight expert when the acquire Disable Device at 15th level, or something (is this the situation you were describing before?), which apart from being totally implausible goes against the grain of the whole "small improvements over time" concept that levels represent.

Well, I was thinking of things in more of a game balance way, but if you're approaching this from the perspective of verisimilitude, keep in mind that levels really don't represent "small improvements over time." They represent sizable improvements at discrete intervals. If you're a Fighter or something, you abruptly get a lot better at combat and a lot tougher and so on. If you instead take your next level in a casting class, it's even weirder; you suddenly gain the ability to cast magic that usually is described in-setting as taking years of study or a special gift or something like that. The guy who becomes really good at picking locks overnight seems positively realistic by comparison.

Of course, in either case, you can always fluff it that it wasn't really "overnight" (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vK4gv11PTI8) anyway. :grin:

Quote from: sparkletwistThe fact is that there are plenty of class-feature-ish things that do work like you described that can cause all sorts of problems: falling behind on spell levels by multiclassing out of a casting class, getting screwed on BAB when you try to multiclass fractional BAB classes, and, in general, the common problem that what you get at level 1 of some other class not being a very good trade vs. what you get for level N+1 of your current class. So, I think the solution is to make it so that multiclassing doesn't have these problems.

Way back on page 1 of this thread I opined that the 4th edition approach to multiclassing where you can pick and choose class features and hopefully end up with something cohesive and capable for your level is actually a pretty decent approach. (4e then broke it in actual execution, but that's no surprise) But, anyway, if you could pick and choose class features instead of entire class levels, then you could take whatever "multiclass feat" or pick off a power list or whatever if you wanted a certain Rogue power, and you could just get it, while not sacrificing other stuff that is essential to your progression in your main class.

I'd agree with this - a "pick and choose class features" system could work really well if implemented elegantly, and the spellcasting/multi-classing thing in Pathfinder does bug me.  For all that I like multiclassing there are definitely some issues (if Pathfinder ever does put out a second edition, I really hope they address this).

Quote from: sparkletwistThey represent sizable improvements at discrete intervals.

Eh, sort of, but not that sizeable.   Most level-up bonuses are fairly small: +1 to attack  - at most an extra attack per round and the ability to hit a very-slightly-better-amoured opponent - or +1 more on your saving throws or a few extra hp etc, as opposed to suddenly going from +0 in Swim to +12 in it (for example), the equivalent of going from an untrained landlubber who's never swum a stroke in his life to an olympic swimmer able to swim up current of a raging river.

When you gain spells it takes multiple levels of experience to gain new spell levels, and even then it's just a single spell level at a time, and anyway with magic it's much easier to suspend your disbelief because there are no real-world comparisons to be drawn.  Anyway, I think it can generally be assumed that characters do have a "special gift" in magic if they're Sorcerers or Witches or whatnot; and with Wizards, you acquire new spells very slowly (a measly 2 spells per level) unless you actually find and research spells, which takes considerable money and/or adventuring time, not to mention more time (and skill checks) to perform the research.

Look what a couple of night shifts does to my thread. LOL.

Real quick answer to Steerpike's question for earlier: my idea for a skill proficiency system would allow for multiple proficiencies on a single skill. There might be a Stealth proficiency which gives a bonus to the stealth skill. A higher proficiency could lessen the penalty when moving full speed; it doesn't make you harder to Notice, but it does give you more options. This way, a higher level character has more tricks, and is able to use their skills in more situations and with less limitations, all while not breaking that coveted 10 point spread on the d20.

I'm also very interested in why it is I'm able to not let a very gamey system get in the way of my roleplaying (ever roleplayed a game of monopoly? Sure, the rules don't help, but ...). It's a very interesting issue, how having even some rules for it (like 3E's rules for craft and profession) makes it suddenly an option for players.

Quote from: XeviatI'm also very interested in why it is I'm able to not let a very gamey system get in the way of my roleplaying (ever roleplayed a game of monopoly? Sure, the rules don't help, but ...).

You're probably a damn good DM!

As much as I dislike 4th edition, I'm sure it's more than possible to have fun playing it with the right people and a good adventure.  Ultimately, I think, these factors matter much, much more than what system's being used.

Quote from: SteerpikeAs much as I dislike 4th edition, I'm sure it's more than possible to have fun playing it with the right people and a good adventure.  Ultimately, I think, these factors matter much, much more than what system's being used.

Incredibly, ultimately, and intrinsically true. A good portion of my group are character optimizers. A good portion are casual with the rules but hard core when it comes to playing. Most are savvy towards rule balance. 4E worked for a large number of us, but not all.

It's really interesting, though, how the changes 4E made could be so group dividing. I wasn't around during 2E, but I've never heard anyone personally who loved 2E but hated 3E. I suppose 4E simply changed just a little too much for some people.

For better or worse, yes.   Getting rid of Vancian magic, balancing classes on combat effectiveness, player wish lists, epic destinies as part of the class.....big changes.   Easier to gm, easier to learn, but too much that could be seen as, ' not D&D.'.   

We will see where 5e goes. 

The whole "Vancian" thing can go both ways considering the whole existence of "Daily powers" kind of makes everyone Vancian, at least as the word is usually used in D&D-playing circles.

Quote from: sparkletwist
The whole "Vancian" thing can go both ways considering the whole existence of "Daily powers" kind of makes everyone Vancian, at least as the word is usually used in D&D-playing circles.

I'm no fan of Vancian magic... But I don't think too much of daily powers either. I guess I like something closer to the 3.5 psionics system.

Just thought I'd share this link (http://untimately.blogspot.ca/2011/12/nalfeshnee-hack.html), which describes a very unusual hack of 4E with elements from 2nd edition and OSR games like Labyrinth Lord and Lamentations of the Flame Princess.  I thought it might of interest to you, Xeviat, given your own hack-in-progress.  I'd also like to emphasize that while I'm no fan of 4th edition, as this thread obviously attests, I'm very interested to see what you come up with and would look forward eagerly to updates!

Eh ... I don't understand a good chunk of what's mentioned as changes, due to my infamiliarity with 2E. I will comment on what I do understand:

2E's "Hovering on Death's Door" rules are dumb, plain and simple. Dead at -10 is awful when the typical damage for a monster is Level+8. Without something to change this, like, say, a level bonus, you can go from up and fighting to dead in one hit. Woops. That's heroic.

Not sure what their problem with the initiative system is. I suspect they misunderstood something? Initiative in 4E works just like it worked in 3E; in 2E, you rolled initiative each round, which I suppose would be a difficult thing to change for some people?

Being able to pick skills/languages in play, rather than during character generation, is a perfectly valid house rule (especially because it does little to unbalance the game). This is really only going to effect the first session or so anyway.

Dragonborn are cool (minus dragonboobs). Likewise, the Eladrin/Elf split makes perfect sense (if Dark Elves are distinct from the others, then why not High Elves and Wood Elves too?).

His firearms are cool. I'd bump them up and make them martial weapons, or bump them up further and make them superior weapons, just so they're rare. It all depends on how you want the world to feel.

I definitely didn't see it as a hack that would appeal to you per se, Xeviat - its sensibilities and mechanics are probably too lethal/grognardy/old-school - but I did think it was an interesting example of how a fairly quick hack might be constructed.

Quote from: Xeviat2E's "Hovering on Death's Door" rules are dumb, plain and simple. Dead at -10 is awful when the typical damage for a monster is Level+8. Without something to change this, like, say, a level bonus, you can go from up and fighting to dead in one hit. Woops. That's heroic.

I'm pretty sure this is kind of the point, actually.  Earlier editions tended to have prominent "save or die effects" and promote a feel of general lethality and risk.  The high probability of character death even at high levels is meant to encourage creativity/resourcefulness/outside-the-box thinking while sweetening the sense of achievement for surviving.  The way I see death's door as functioning is kind of like how massive damage thresholds function.  Higher level monsters are more likely to hit that threshold, requiring a save-or-die to kick in, thus keeping things dicey even for upper-level heroes.  Many 3E hacks lowered the damage threshold in some way (sometimes to a character's Con, sometimes to Con+HD or something similar).  This approach, however, is definitely not for everyone.  Fans of the later editions - especially 4th - would probably be inclined to see this kind of rule as fundamentally unfair, because to such players, D&D is structured around a series of balanced encounters that offer a carefully scaled level-appropriate challenge and likewise-modulated level-appropriate treasures (which is great, if you're into that sort of play-style).  Stuff like death's door is designed to mess with that kind of balance, in a sense; 4th edition makes it fairly hard to characters to die, so this kind of hack undermines its lack of lethality.

Quote from: XeviatNot sure what their problem with the initiative system is. I suspect they misunderstood something? Initiative in 4E works just like it worked in 3E; in 2E, you rolled initiative each round, which I suppose would be a difficult thing to change for some people?

I think you misread that bit.  I think they're talking about rolling 1d6 per side in the combat.  So if it's the party vs. some orcs, both sides just roll 1d6.  Super-simplified initiative.  In some earlier versions, you just went in order of Dexterity and rolled a d6 in case of a tie, so this may also be what he's talking about.  Personally it's not to my taste, but some people dig this kind of simplification.

Quote from: XeviatDragonborn are cool (minus dragonboobs). Likewise, the Eladrin/Elf split makes perfect sense (if Dark Elves are distinct from the others, then why not High Elves and Wood Elves too?).

I think Dragonborn are great for those that like them, but they feel much, much more like something out fo a videogame than something out of classic/pulp fantasy literature.  As for the Eladrin/Elf thing, it always puzzled me in 4th edition, as I always thought the term "High Elves" was fine, but to each their own.  Although some interesting parallels could be drawn between 4th edition's Elf-splitting and Tolkien's approach to elves, the execution reminded me more of World of Wracraft's Elf-divisions (Night Elf, Blood Elf) for some reason, so my guess is that in an effort to cultivate the classic/old-school feel - the point of this particular hack - those races were merged/eschewed.

I basically just posted it as an example of what a quick hack might look like in overview.

Quote from: Xeviat
2E's "Hovering on Death's Door" rules are dumb, plain and simple. Dead at -10 is awful when the typical damage for a monster is Level+8. Without something to change this, like, say, a level bonus, you can go from up and fighting to dead in one hit. Woops. That's heroic.

I wouldn't say plain and simple, dumb--that's an unfair simplification of the issue. They work for some people; it depends what you want out of your game. And it could be argued fighting when you know a single thrust could kill you is not only more realistic, but more heroic. It's easy to charge into battle if you know it's a "fair" fight (by which we mean weighted in your favor) and you're most likely going to come out on top. It takes a bit more heroism to go into a losing situation, eyes open, and ready to take that last desperate chance.

Regardless, lying on the floor bleeding to death, whether it be for 1 round or 5, is not generally what I consider heroic.

I found the section on making 4E monsters feel old school pretty interesting.  Particularly this crude (but effective?) approach:

Quote from: UltimatelyHere are some of my techniques for tweaking monsters to dampen the above-mentioned dynamics without totally scrapping the system. If I'm using a monster from the monster manual, my default method is to cut the HP in half and double all damage dice (before bonuses). This makes battles of attrition less likely and also produces a credible threat. When PCs are equipped with healing surges and piles of HP, doing 1d6 or 1d8 damage is just not scary. If I use minions, I make their damage variable so that it is not obvious to the players which enemies are minions (though I have been using minions less recently; they end up just feeling like clutter).

...

Thus, a 15 hit die (level) dragon would have 225 HP and a AC of 25 (18 from plate + 7 from inflation). Primary attack: claw/claw/bite +10 vs AC (2d8/2d8/2d12, each +7 for inflation). Secondary attack: breath weapon (fire): 10x10 area, 15d10 (luck throw for half damage, no hit roll required). Speed 10, fly 20. For a dragon, I might add one more special attack as well (because, you know, dragon). XP 2000 (15 * 10 + 500 for flying and fire breathing). I'm still experimenting with the relationship between hit dice and attack bonus.

Compare to the Adult Blue Dragon from the Monster Manual (page 78), which is a level 13 solo artillery monster. HP 655, AC 30, XP 4000, claw +16 vs. AC 1d6 + 6, lightning breath +18 vs. reflex 2d12 + 10 (miss is half damage). The dragon created using my house rules is easier to hit and has fewer HP, but has much more destructive attacks. This requires more planning and less direct assault, and also cuts down on the time required for combat, which is exactly what I want.

Quote from: Xeviat2E's "Hovering on Death's Door" rules are dumb, plain and simple.

In the context of 4e, I completely agree. Here's why:

Quote from: SteerpikeEarlier editions tended to have prominent "save or die effects" and promote a feel of general lethality and risk.

Earlier editions also had character generation processes that took five minutes and were highly randomized. 4e characters need to be more survivable simply due to the degree of optimization and decision-making that goes into making a 4e character-- it's basically insulting to the player to have a system that stipulates all that work and preparation be done and then have it potentially taken away the first time the dice hit the table.

That's a legitimate criticism, sparkletwist (though 2nd edition characters did take a little time to build).  Based on what little the hack actually shows, though, it sounds like the game isn't absurdly deadly (i.e. very early D&D/AD&D), just a lot more lethal than 4th.  The question the Nalfeshnee Hack GM would have to ask themself would be whether the trade-off is worth it.

Remember, too, that death in most modern D&D games isn't permanent.  It's really more along the lines of a 5000 gp fine (or whatever) and having to sit out for part of the combat.  So it's not like every time a character dies all the time/energy that went into making them is rendered worthless.  Nothing necessarily gets "taken away" when a character dies, except for some pretend money.  If the other characters are strapped for cash, a quick Gentle Repose and a premade extra character handed to the dead character's player by the GM can mitigate the problem and start a new adventure (i.e. raise funds to bring back so-and-so) until the character can get brought back.

I run a fairly lethal Pathfinder game (I'd say someone dies every 3-4 sessions or so), and we still haven't "lost" a PC in any real sense.  PCs have been raised or reincarnated a lot, and the characters have to burn some of their funds to make this happen (though they sometimes manage to get people to give them such services for free or at a discount), but there's no perma-death.

Ok, I see your point. I was taking dead to mean, you know, actually dead.

I don't really like that approach either, but for other reasons. Amusingly, part of why I come down rather squarely on in anti-character-death camp is that I have a kind of more "hardcore" stance in that I want "dead" to actually mean something.

Quote from: sparkletwist
I don't really like that approach either, but for other reasons. Amusingly, part of why I come down rather squarely on in anti-character-death camp is that I have a kind of more "hardcore" stance in that I want "dead" to actually mean something.

I agree death should mean something, and character death should be rare, though I'm not sure I agree that 4e goes the way I like a system to as far as making fights feel meaningful.

If your character cannot die in combat - why play at all? If there's no danger of losing, there's no pleasure in winning. This is true in any game, RPG or otherwise. Why play chess if you can't lose - same logic here.

Really once D&D came out with 4e, I stopped considering WotC a company worth following. Really, no matter how successful DDN becomes, I won't even look at it, because WotC made it - which to me is a reason not to look.

Quote from: Gamer Printshop
Really once D&D came out with 4e, I stopped considering WotC a company worth following. Really, no matter how successful DDN becomes, I won't even look at it, because WotC made it - which to me is a reason not to look.

I've never understood absolutist attitudes like this.

If a company makes a product I don't like, I won't buy it. If a company recognizes its mistake and attempts to make amends, then I will be amenable to them (especially if they are actually trying to right their wrongs (i.e. the way WotC is)). :)

WotC is in the business of making games, it's not like they are running out and cutting the fins off sharks.

Quote from: Gamer PrintshopIf your character cannot die in combat - why play at all? If there's no danger of losing, there's no pleasure in winning. This is true in any game, RPG or otherwise. Why play chess if you can't lose - same logic here.

This based on two large and largely wrong assumptions:

1. The logic isn't the same as chess at all because chess is overtly a competitive game between two players. An RPG is a cooperatively told story that the table builds together. While there may be challenge and a competitive element, even the D&D rules themselves say that it is fundamentally a cooperative game and the real goal is to have fun.

2. Even assuming a more competitive element, there is nothing saying that "losing" has to equal "death." Even without character death, there is plenty of chance to lose: characters can be defeated, suffer setbacks, be socially disgraced, and have all kinds of interesting things happen-- most significantly, they can lose in ways that enrich and expand the story of that character, as opposed to simply bringing it to an end, which is all that (permanent) death does.

Quote from: sparkletwistI don't really like that approach either, but for other reasons. Amusingly, part of why I come down rather squarely on in anti-character-death camp is that I have a kind of more "hardcore" stance in that I want "dead" to actually mean something.

That's fine if that's what you're into, but to remove raise/resurrection/reincarnate spells from D&D (or to make them prohibitively expensive/rare by default) would be a very fundamental change, especially for recent editions of the game.  Death means something in D&D, it just doesn't mean as much from a narrative/thematic perspective, which I'll readily admit is a major tradeoff compared to a system where permadeath is the norm.  Character death does have some serious short-term consequences - the party is now down a member, making every fight considerably harder.  If their cleric/druid died, they're out a healer, if their rogue died, they'd better backtrack carefully or they're much more likely to run into traps, etc.  There's now a body they have to lug around, which is heavy, and if they don't have access to Gentle Repose there's a ticking clock on how long they have to get the body to a temple, which, depending on how common high level clerics are, may be quite some distance away.  And on top of that there's the  financial burden.  Death has meaning here, but it's as much or more pragmatic/logistical as it is emotional.  Even with resurrection, though, death can still have some dramatic resonance.  If/when the character comes back, they may want to get revenge on whatever killed them (assuming it's still alive), for example.  Death may have been a very truamatic event (a la Buffy the Vampire Slayer), altering the way the character behaves.

And, of course, a GM can always prohibit resurrection spells or make casters capable of them extremely uncommon, although such a GM would then be advised to either be very careful with the lethality levels or make sure their players are onboard with risking their characters' very existence.

Heck, being unable to recover your ally's body can be a huge setback.

I think there's a better middle ground between Gygaxian Death Dungeons with no possibility of resurrection and the Comic Book/MMO-style constant resurrection concept.

Quote from: Elemental ElfI think there's a better middle ground between Gygaxian Death Dungeons with no possibility of resurrection and the Comic Book/MMO-style constant resurrection concept.

Amen!

What would be even beter would be a game with flexibility of play-style and guidelines for tailoring the game to one's desired lethality levels built into the system itself, though this may be overly ambitious.

These are fair points, but I contend that the "insult to the player" is still largely there: the player of the dead character is, after all, usually forced to sit out during all of these resurrection hijinks. That is, the play time lost creating a new character now becomes play time lost because the group has go through whatever resurrection hoops are in place-- which, as you've pointed out, can be significant.

Granted, you can play a random NPC or something, but that may wreck immersion for some people, and probably feels "less fun" than playing your own character. At least, it would to me.

Quote from: Steerpike

Quote from: Elemental ElfI think there's a better middle ground between Gygaxian Death Dungeons with no possibility of resurrection and the Comic Book/MMO-style constant resurrection concept.

Amen!

Problem is, how do you find it?

The first question you have to answer is, how common should the spell(s) be from the PC's perspective? There's a lot of wiggle room between Zero and Infinite.

Related to the first question is at what level can Clerics/Druids/Healers/etc. cast a spell to resurrect their fellows?

How common should the spell be in the game world (outside of the PCs)? Does every Parish Priest know the spell or only the Bishops? Perhaps only the gods are allowed to cast the spell?

What is the cost for resurrection, in terms of money or serviced rendered?

Should there be tiers of resurrection spells where by lower level spells can revive the dead but at a sever cost, while higher level spells essentially remove those deficits? Or should there only be one kind of resurrection spell?

How long should the spell take to cast? There's a big difference between instantaneous and setting up a complex seven day ritual.

Can wands/scrolls/staves of resurrection spells be made? Should they be made?

Quote from: sparkletwistThese are fair points, but I contend that the "insult to the player" is still largely there: the player of the dead character is, after all, usually forced to sit out during all of these resurrection hijinks.

I'd agree that, as per the default rules, this is a major issue.  As a GM I try to have available NPCs on hand for players to play instead of their characters if they want to.

Quote from: sparkletwistGranted, you can play a random NPC or something, but that may wreck immersion for some people, and probably feels "less fun" than playing your own character. At least, it would to me.

That's fair enough, although on occasion I think the opposite effect can be true - it can be sort of fun to sometimes switch things up with a different character for an hour or whatever.

Quote from: sparkletwistThat is, the play time lost creating a new character now becomes play time lost because the group has go through whatever resurrection hoops are in place-- which, as you've pointed out, can be significant.

They can also be quite fun, with good GMing.  Losing a party member can add to the tension of a fight or crawl; if a character goes down, suddenly things can get quite serious.  And the trip to a temple can be entertaining as well.

A lot of the point of high-lethality, as I see it, isn't actually to kill people a lot.  It's to cultivate a certain type of play and a certain atmosphere that I don't think simply a "willing of themes" can accomplish.  I think it can be basically summarized like this:

1) When you're aware your character can die, you'll usually play differently than if you're fairly well-assured of your character's safety.

2) This awareness can sometimes encourage more creativity and strategic thinking.  If there's a negligible chance of your character dying, then the only reason not to run into every battle in full-out assault mode is because you think it might not seem as interesting.  Some players (I'm thinking of you, actually, sparkletwist) don't need additional "incentive" to think tactically, plan attacks carefully, be cautious with resources etc, but many do.

3) For some players, a higher risk of lethality can lead to a greater "thrill" of accomplishment, especially if the reasons for that accomplishment weren't based merely on luck but on inventive solutions or workarounds to deadly problems which, in a non-lethal system, wouldn't have carried the same consequences.

4) Married to this, some players will find a higher degree of lethality lends tension and atmosphere to the game.  I think this may be especially true in survival horror type games.

This blog post (http://angrydm.com/2012/03/save-or-die-and-lethality-in-dd-next/) gives some interesting examples.

Some players won't find the above true, or will find a lethal game unpleasant for other reasons, or will find the things lethality adds aren't sufficient to outweigh the things it takes away.  Which is just fine.

Quote from: SteerpikeIt's to cultivate a certain type of play and a certain atmosphere that I don't think simply a "willing of themes" can accomplish.

In general, I think I have a lot more faith in a game group's ability to create a certain atmosphere purely through consensus and descriptive roleplay than you do. Which one of us is "right" depends mostly on who is playing, of course.

Quote from: SteerpikeWhen you're aware your character can die, you'll usually play differently than if you're fairly well-assured of your character's safety.

Ok, sure. However, we've established already that death-with-resurrection is essentially one of these defeat-with-setbacks outcomes I'm always advocating; it's just a particularly annoying one because a big part of the setback is essentially "you don't get to play your character for N amount of real time."

But anyway, since death-with-resurrection is just defeat-with-setbacks, essentially what you've said is "When you're aware your character can suffer significant setbacks, you'll usually play differently than if you're fairly well-assured of your character's safety." And... I completely agree with that!

Well. unless you were talking about perma-death. That's different. But there's still plenty of room for risk even without it, because...

Quote from: SteerpikeIf there's a negligible chance of your character dying, then the only reason not to run into every battle in full-out assault mode is because you think it might not seem as interesting.

Or because you just don't have the power to win a full-out assault and you know it. Or because that would alert far more enemies and turn a potentially easy win into a potential gigantic failure. Or because you could get captured and that would suck also. Or because this is the one chance you have to have this battle and if you lose you don't get another shot. Or, even, yeah, the thing you said-- this one really depends a lot on player mentality so that's why I'm putting it last and least-- the character doesn't know that the system gives a negligible chance of dying and will as a result realistically tend to be careful anyway.

I think a real problem is the inability of a lot of GMs to think of worthwhile defeat states than "you're dead." D&D does very little to help in this regard. As an example of that, just change "save or die" to "save or lose" in that blog entry and I almost completely agree with it. :grin:

Quote from: sparkletwistIn general, I think I have a lot more faith in a game group's ability to create a certain atmosphere purely through consensus and descriptive roleplay than you do. Which one of us is "right" depends mostly on who is playing, of course.

This is true, although I don't think the two are mutually exclusive, and I think that the right mechanics (like lethality) can encourage/complement/supplement "consensus" roleplaying.

Quote from: sparkletwistBut anyway, since death-with-resurrection is just defeat-with-setbacks, essentially what you've said is "When you're aware your character can suffer significant setbacks, you'll usually play differently than if you're fairly well-assured of your character's safety." And... I completely agree with that!

So... are we in agreement then?  Death (not permadeath) is a setback/negative consequence, like any other, albeit usually more severe than most.  If it wasn't "annoying," per se, there wouldn't be much motivation to try and avoid it.

Quote from: sparkletwistOr because you just don't have the power to win a full-out assault and you know it. Or because that would alert far more enemies and turn a potentially easy win into a potential gigantic failure. Or because you could get captured and that would suck also. Or because this is the one chance you have to have this battle and if you lose you don't get another shot.

These things are all true, too, but we're talking about a game where violence and sword-fighting and people shooting arrows and stuff is pretty common, so to have "death" on the table as a setback makes sense.

Quote from: sparkletwistI think a real problem is the inability of a lot of GMs to think of worthwhile defeat states than "you're dead." D&D does very little to help in this regard.

Sure, I can agree with this.  A big part of the game is about violence and battles, which sort of inevitably entails the risk of dying.  Any game that regularly involves lethal force is going to run into this to one degree or another.  Those who don't find that kind of thing interesting should probably seek different sorts of games.

EDIT: I'm not suggesting death should be the only setback in D&D.  There should be plenty of other "negative consequences" when the players make decisions that don't work out!

Quote from: Elemental_Elf

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Really once D&D came out with 4e, I stopped considering WotC a company worth following. Really, no matter how successful DDN becomes, I won't even look at it, because WotC made it - which to me is a reason not to look.

I've never understood absolutist attitudes like this.

If a company makes a product I don't like, I won't buy it. If a company recognizes its mistake and attempts to make amends, then I will be amenable to them (especially if they are actually trying to right their wrongs (i.e. the way WotC is)). :)

WotC is in the business of making games, it's not like they are running out and cutting the fins off sharks.

Back in the 1980's I played lots of different games and game systems. These days are different, I have almost no time at all, so on weekend gaming, my group sticks to one system and one ongoing campaign. I don't need two game systems, so once 3.5 ended, I looked to see what was coming up. The choice became Pathfinder or 4e - pick one. I picked Pathfinder. So I'm not really an absolutist, I'm just a guy with limited time and cannot play every game system no matter how good. I pick one that works for me, and Pathfinder is it. Especially since I develop and design material for publication using Pathfinder, I don't want to confuse myself with rules from more than one system.

Consider, for example, I was still playing 2e when 3.0 was released, and at the time not needing a second game system, never left 2e. When one of our players began buying 3.5, we took a look, liked it and started playing. We missed 3.0 altogether, and didn't even begin using 3.5 until well into it's publishing cycle. We played 3.5 for about 5 years. While there was no particular need to stop playing 3.5, I wanted to develop my own game material and using a 'dead' system was not acceptable, so I looked at new systems - and it was then we had the Pathfinder vs. 4e decision to make, and made it.

When I was making my choice of one system, I thoroughly looked at 4e. One of my gamers even bought the Gift Box with the players, GM's and monster guide - we rolled up characters, ran a one-shot and afterwards, as a group went "yech, not for me."

Since Pathfinder isn't going away any time soon, I have no reason to look at DDN - and from what I've read about it, it holds little interest to me.

Again it's not absolutist or any one way of thinking, it's just a limitation of time and a willingness to work with one system, that my decision and reason to play is any particular way. In the end WotC didn't make a mistake, it just made a system I wasn't interested in. I know many who like it, though I'm not one of them. So it's not about "hate" on any publishing company, it's about only needing one system, and D&D is nolonger that system for me.

Besides regarding RPGs, I am loyal to games, not companies. Really, I have no particular love of Paizo Publishing as a company, it's pretty much meaningless to me. My interest is in their game only.

Quote from: Elemental ElfIf a company makes a product I don't like, I won't buy it. If a company recognizes its mistake and attempts to make amends, then I will be amenable to them (especially if they are actually trying to right their wrongs).

I'd stop short of saying I'll never ever buy WotC products again, but they've gotta be pretty damn impressive for me to do so.  Leaving aside the matter of WotC's dodgy business decisions (the GSL etc), I just didn't like their last product (i.e. 4th edition) pretty intensely, so it's going to be a real uphill battle for them to regain my interest as a consumer.  Most of the things I've heard about D&D Next so far have been cautiously optimistic, though I wonder whether it just seems better in some players' minds when placed next to 4th; time will tell.

Quote from: SteerpikeSo... are we in agreement then?  Death (not permadeath) is a setback/negative consequence, like any other, albeit usually more severe than most.  If it wasn't "annoying," per se, there wouldn't be much motivation to try and avoid it.

Sort of. By annoying I meant specifically annoying the player.

In-character setbacks may throw a monkey wrench into the overall plans, but as long as everyone's flexible and a good sport (and the GM isn't just being a jerk) then the game is still fun. On the other hand, being told "you don't get to play your character for N amount of time," where N is some sizable amount of time, or, in the case of permadeath, "ever," is generally not so much fun. It may lead to other fun outcomes if you want to play NPCs or roll up someone new or whatever, but, unlike some other setbacks, it in itself does not add anything except potential annoyance.

Quote from: SteerpikeThese things are all true, too, but we're talking about a game where violence and sword-fighting and people shooting arrows and stuff is pretty common, so to have "death" on the table as a setback makes sense.

In some games, it works well enough to take the approach that PG-rated movies do where everyone acknowledges they can die in perilous situations but nobody actually does. I understand that some groups may find this dumb, though, and it probably depends largely on how much "by consensus" stuff you're willing/able to use.

Quote from: sparkletwistIn-character setbacks may throw a monkey wrench into the overall plans, but as long as everyone's flexible and a good sport (and the GM isn't just being a jerk) then the game is still fun. On the other hand, being told "you don't get to play your character for N amount of time," where N is some sizable amount of time, or, in the case of permadeath, "ever," is generally not so much fun. It may lead to other fun outcomes if you want to play NPCs or roll up someone new or whatever, but, unlike some other setbacks, it in itself does not add anything except potential annoyance.

I understand your point, but what I'm trying to say (I think, perhaps inarticulately) is that by having the threat of that fate (the "annoyance of death") present, players may alter their behaviour in ways that may (in the end) make things more fun.  The possibility of a negative consequence for the player as much as the character can act as a motivating force of a certain sort which, in a strange way, may actually make the experience more enjoyable.  Again, the point here is to try your best to avoid the consequence you don't want, both as a player and as a character.

EDIT: sparkletwist, I know you've said in the past that you personally don't get much thrill out of a sense of risk, so perhaps the above just isn't true for you, as a player.

I agree with Steerpike, and we're talking about Perma-Death as a necessary element to make for an exciting game. That's the point to maximizing your abilities, gathering powerful defense/offensive magic items, covering youself in spells, to give you the best chance to survive a challenge, where if you fail, you're very likely dead. If you don't have that, you're playing an entirely different kind of game. I play games to risk extreme failure for the chance to valiantly succeed. At least in my games, risking Perma-Death is what makes playing worth it - from the point of view as a GM and player.

Quote from: Steerpikeplayers may alter their behaviour in ways that may (in the end) make things more fun.

Players may also alter their behavior in ways that make things less fun, or at least introduce less variety. The thing about having the player have "you don't get to play" (or whatever consequence for the player, not just the character) on the line is that it creates a certain hardcore feel. Players want to keep playing, so they'll play for keeps. It may well encourage a bit more thought being put into tactical choices and optimization, but it discourages quirky character concepts, trying audacious and zany things, and staying in character even when the in-character choice isn't the soundest tactical move. Some groups may want to encourage this style, and they're free to go for it, but it has plenty of drawbacks, too.

Quote from: Steerpikesparkletwist, I know you've said in the past that you personally don't get much thrill out of a sense of risk, so perhaps the above isn't true for you, as a player.

This is probably true. I do enjoy when the character is risking something, but I think you understand this distinction. I think it's basically just a part of good roleplay that when the situation is one in which the character's life would be in peril, the player plays the character to behave in that way, regardless of what conceits may be in place in the system.

I also wonder how much risk is really in place, even for people who say that's their thing. It seems like, ultimately, nobody wants the game to crash and burn, so GMs frequently do things like apply spot-nerfs to enemies, make them use suboptimal tactics, fudge the dice, or do other things that mitigate the actual risk. If they're going to do that, of course, the only difference between them and me is that I'm more honest about the kind of game I play. :grin:

Quote from: sparkletwistPlayers may also alter their behavior in ways that make things less fun, or at least introduce less variety. The thing about having the player have "you don't get to play" (or whatever consequence for the player, not just the character) on the line is that it creates a certain hardcore feel. Players want to keep playing, so they'll play for keeps. It may well encourage a bit more thought being put into tactical choices and optimization, but it discourages quirky character concepts, trying audacious and zany things, and staying in character even when the in-character choice isn't the soundest tactical move. Some groups may want to encourage this style, and they're free to go for it, but it has plenty of drawbacks, too.

I fully, 100% agree.  Each approach has pros and cons.  A more lethal game is fun in ways that a less lethal game cannot be and vice versa.  Personally - in D&D, as opposed to other games - I like a level of lethality that strikes a balance somewhere between the old days and 3.X/Pathfinder.

Quote from: sparkletwistI also wonder how much risk is really in place, even for people who say that's their thing. It seems like, ultimately, nobody wants the game to crash and burn, so GMs frequently do things like apply spot-nerfs to enemies, make them use suboptimal tactics, fudge the dice, or do other things that mitigate the actual risk. If they're going to do that, of course, the only difference between them and me is that I'm more honest about the kind of game I play

This does happen, though I think it's part of striking a balance.  With some of the stuff you mentioned, though, the GM isn't letting the players know that things are being tweaked in their favour.  The illusion of a threat is still in place.  Fudging too often will cause suspicions, though.  I think, generally, that the more lethal the game is - and the more onboard with that level of lethality the players are  - the less the GM should fudge the dice, to contribute to the "hardcore" feel you mentioned before.

Speaking of hardcore, I thought of a good non-tabletop example for the kind of thing I mean.  I just started playing Fallout: New Vegas, and there's a "hardcore" mode where your character's dehydration levels and starvation levels etc get tracked, and you need to seek out water and food (preferably non-irradiated) on a regular basis to prevent your character from becoming weak and, eventually, dying.  Now dying of starvation/thirst is not something I want for my character or as a player.  It sounds boring and stupid and I don't think it would be fun at all, or add anything to my playing experience.  But because the threat of starving or dying of thirst is present, I'm going on all sorts of crazy adventures I wouldn't normally be - driving monsters from wells and raiding bandit outposts for their bottled water and hunting animals for food and bartering guns for sustenance.  I never did that stuff in the regular, non-hardcore Fallout 3, even though there's no reason I couldn't - I just didn't have to, so I didn't bother, rather concentrating on the various quests and other activities the game put before me.  The threat of the very unfun fate of dying of thirst motivated me to do stuff I wouldn't normally have done, which turned out to be really fun.

Quote from: SteerpikeWith some of the stuff you mentioned, though, the GM isn't letting the players know that things are being tweaked in their favour.  The illusion of a threat is still in place.  Fudging too often will cause suspicions, though.

It completely destroys the integrity of the rules and the ability to trust the GM if the game is stated to be one way and then secretly tweaked to be some other way. If the GM claims to run a "challenging" or "lethal" game and then tweaks outcomes to subvert that, that GM is more or less just running the same kind of game I do, only lying about it, and GMs lying to their players about issues like game parameters and objectives does nothing but corrode group dynamics.

This may be the GM's own preferences being asserted over the group's desires, or it may turn out that the players don't actually want such a lethal, for-keeps game, regardless of what they say-- in either case, what is actually needed is an honest and clear discussion about what the group actually wants in its game, not tweaking and fudging behind the GM screen.

Quote from: Steerpikethe more onboard with that level of lethality the players are

I don't see this as a "the more." Players should always be on board with whatever the level of lethality the game is. Otherwise the game is ill-suited to that group, or the GM is being a jerk. In either case, that is just going to lead to disappointment.

Quote from: SteerpikeThe threat of the very unfun fate of dying of thirst motivated me to do stuff I wouldn't normally have done, which turned out to be really fun.

This is actually an interesting anecdote because of something that happened in a recent game of Asura. The characters were in the desert city of Agahza, wandering around in the midday heat. I decided that there would be an opportunity here, and I compelled the characters to be thirsty and go looking for some water. This led to an interesting adventure that would not have otherwise happened! However, it was done entirely in the context of a "narrativist" system that normally wouldn't have tracked that kind of thing-- so, yes, had they not pursued this quest, the only cost would've been some metagame plot control currency rather than being forced on pain of ignoble death to go look for water, but hey, all that really that means is that I (as the GM) don't get to railroad.

In short, yes, I agree that unintended side quests can create interesting and fun gameplay opportunities. I don't agree that introducing unfun "you're dead" mechanics to force players to go on those quests or else has anything to do with why they're fun.

I totally agree that players should be onboard with the game's lethality (and all of its other mechanics) as much as possible.  You're right.

I'm not sure whether or not fudging the dice is always the worst thing in world, as you essentially imply  :P.  Usually I don't do a lot of fudging, but have I sometimes very occasionally spontaneously (and invisibly) decided that something should be DC 20 instead of DC 25 as it says in my notes because everyone just failed the check and I realized I made a bad decision by making that DC too high and now everyone is going to be at the bottom of a pit of poisoned spikes or whatever and it's really my fault because I didn't design this part of the adventure well and I'd just be punishing the players for my poor design decision?  Yeah I've done that.  I try to avoid doing it, but it happens, and so long as it's discrete and springs from something like a GM design error I'm not sure it really merits such withering condemnation.  In a hyper-lethal game that's meant to be very hardcore about the rules, maybe a bit of withering condemnation, if it's glaring.

Quote from: sparkletwistThis is actually an interesting anecdote because of something that happened in a recent game of Asura. The characters were in the desert city of Agahza, wandering around in the midday heat. I decided that there would be an opportunity here, and I compelled the characters to be thirsty and go looking for some water. This led to an interesting adventure that would not have otherwise happened! However, it was done entirely in the context of a "narrativist" system that normally wouldn't have tracked that kind of thing-- so, yes, had they not pursued this quest, the only cost would've been some metagame plot control currency rather than being forced on pain of ignoble death to go look for water, but hey, all that really that means is that I (as the GM) don't get to railroad.

This is cool and sounds like a lot of fun.  I've got not problem with how you handled this, given asura's system.  Your players are clearly onboard with asura and I'm sure they had a good time.  It sounds like it yielded an interesting side-quest.

In a system where your characters could die ignobly of thirst if they don't get water, and this facet is built into the system rather than being announced by the GM, the above side-quest would probably feel different.  For you and your group, it sounds like it probably wouldn't have been as fun, because the prospect of a potential ignoble death from thirst and the loss of their characters (either temporarily or permanently) would be stressful and unfun, and the knowledge of that possibility would cast a pall over the game.

For a completely different group more onboard with a higher lethality level, the knowledge that no this is serious guys your characters need water or they are going to die you think I'm kidding look here's the body of a guy who died of thirst go find some water now or you guys are really screwed is going to contribute a feeling of urgency and desperation to the proceedings, and when they find the oasis and drive away the beasts/bandits/ghouls/evil genie guarding it, the sense of relief and accomplishment is going to be correspondingly intense.

I don't think it's wrong to say that the two experiences would be very different, or that the two experiences yield different sets of rewards because of the difference in stakes and mechanics.  That's all I'm saying.   I'm not claiming "lethal > non-lethal" or that people who don't like lethal games aren't playing properly or that they'd have more fun if they tried a more lethal game.  I don't think either approach is intrinsically better.  But they are different; one system can't fully replicate the experience of the other.  Some people like the more lethal system, and there are reasons for that that have to do with the way a lethal system makes you think and experience the game, and a non-lethal system can't duplicate that no matter how many metagame points the GM deducts.

Quote from: SteerpikeI'm not sure whether or not fudging the dice is always the worst thing in world, as you essentially imply

No, it's not the worst thing in the world. However, I think the group dynamic works best when the space between "what the game purports to be" and "how the game actually is played" is as small as possible. That makes sure everyone knows what they're getting and is on board with it. Doing things like fudging dice to prevent lethal outcomes that are supposedly part of the game increases that gap.

Quote from: SteerpikeI sometimes very occasionally spontaneously (and invisibly) decided that something should be DC 20 instead of DC 25 as it says in my notes because everyone just failed the check and I realized I made a bad decision by making that DC too high and now everyone is going to be at the bottom of a pit of poisoned spikes or whatever and it's really my fault because I didn't design this part of the adventure well and I'd just be punishing the players for my poor design decision

Actually, I think your poor design decision wasn't setting the DC, but setting up this trap at all. Seriously, what is the point of putting in this death trap at all unless you're running some sort of a Gygaxian death dungeon? And if you are, then you might as well stick to your guns and kill anyone who fails their check, because that's how Gygaxian death dungeons work.

If the whole point of the trap is just to have everyone pass and pretend like there was risk because it would've been bad if they failed but the GM was secretly making sure nobody would ever actually fail, that's just a ridiculous cognitive dissonance scenario that is basically saying "my players are incapable of roleplaying characters that are in peril." And that's dumb.

I probably wouldn't use a trap like that in actuality - I'd try to think of something cleverer.  But when I do use traps of the non-riddle variety I try to calibrate DCs so that if the trap goes unnoticed it's most likely to hurt/debilitate 1-2 PCs (as opposed to all of them or none of them), either because of its DCs or the nature of the trap itself.  The "point" of putting such a trap in a dungeon could be any number of things beyond it being a tomb-of-horrors-style Gygaxian deathtrap dungeon, though.  Like cultivating an atmosphere of paranoia or presenting a minor challenge that puts a strain on PC resources (i.e. now some of them need healing, restoration, etc).

I think you generate more paranoia and fear when only one player falls into the trap.

Pit traps, collapsing floors/walls and the like are a great way to create organically branching paths. Now the PC(s) face challenges they otherwise wouldn't, and certain opportunities are closed off.