# Flipping the Table: Did Removing Miniatures Save D&D?



## Ath-kethin

Dunno if removing miniatures saved D&D. It definitely saved/resurrected my interest in the game, though.


----------



## TerraDave

How can this article not mention 3.5? Or painted plastic?

Anyways…as anyone who looked at a copy of Dragon or went into a game store in the 80s would know, people still used minis for D&D. But a lot of people played without them.

D&D rules where in fact very precise about distance and area in combat, and by 2E you could buy wet and dry erase grids at cons and lots of fantasy minis where available. (Warhammer was huge.) Later 2E supplements began giving more tactical options and mentioned using grids. 

For 3.0 designers always claimed they where following what gamers where already doing in practice. The 2000 survey is telling. That’s very early in the edition, and in fact, it doesn’t require minis, and makes some concessions to not using them. But minis and grids are mentioned. 

And then WotC figured out how to make pre-painted minis affordable. These where launched together with 3.5, which in the name of clarity focused primarily on using minis and a grid. In general, the .5 edition tried to specify all sorts of niggling things (e.g. how big is a bugbear rogues shortsword). And conveniently, sales of pre-painted minis boomed, people bought those things by the case.

4E followed the logic of 3.5, and booming mini sales, to double down on the focus on tactical mini combat. And shortly thereafter they shut down mini production! It turns out that costs where getting too high and the market was saturated (and the mini game they created to compete with Warhammer never took off.)

Enter 2018. Fantasy minis are as available as ever, including a big second-hand market in pre-painted singles and some very high profile kick starters. Roll20 and Fantasy Grounds combine online play with virtual tokens, which is probably very novice friendly. Its easy to play 5e with minis, largely because it _is_ more streamlined. 

But sure, I do think that 5E lends itself to a more free wheeling style. It does have greater clarity then AD&D and less fiddle faddle then 3 or 4 . But maybe its just a better game overall.


----------



## Kobold Boots

No doubt that removes no minis reduced barrier to entry.  However I have to say that I prefer minis in play and table play to full theatre of mind.


----------



## aco175

I recently went to a convention and played one of the games with no minis and the 3 of us that normally play together found it confusing and not as enjoyable.  The fights were only a few rounds in 5e, so maybe that is something, but overall we continue to play with minis.


----------



## emssmiley2002

aco175 said:


> I recently went to a convention and played one of the games with no minis and the 3 of us that normally play together found it confusing and not as enjoyable.  The fights were only a few rounds in 5e, so maybe that is something, but overall we continue to play with minis.




RLTW


----------



## vpuigdoller

My friends and I play online using roll20 and we do use maps and tokens but we didnt before when we played in person.  We tried it theater when we switched but was very confusing for majority of the group.  I have heard from other groups that when they switched to online gaming they had to start using maps and tokens as well too idk.


----------



## Cergorach

While 3(.5)E didn't require miniatures, it was the most popular edition since the 80s. 5E still needs a lot of sales to catch up to that. But as the results of the 2000 research indicate, around half the people use miniatures, going either way exclusively excludes half your player base.

But blaming minis for the 4E failure is far too shortsighted, 4E had more problems then that. We quite often used minis in combat, especially when I was DM I would often get some impressive looking minis to the table. But sometimes using minis on a grid wasn't what was required of the scene, so we could work without. Our group liked using minis since Basic D&D (boxed sets with poster maps for minis) and AD&D 2E, it had for many fond memories of games that lead to D&D for them (HeroQuest)... I found 4E a very strong technical game, but it utterly lacked in style (motivation to play), something 2E, 3E, Pathfinder and 5E has more then enough of. If anything, the combat was designed for a group like mine, but it completely lacked soul.


----------



## Jester David

I find this interesting, as I raised this point on the Paizo forums regarding Pathfinder 2 and making that game more friendly to play without minis. And there was surprising pushback.


----------



## Jacob Lewis

There is no denying that 5e is hugely successful, and it is one of the best iterations of the game system since it's original inception almost half a century ago. And while one could argue that less emphasis, or reliance, on costly, and often time-consuming supplemental components could attribute to that overall success, I daresay it is not. With the exception of 4e, which I'll get into in a minute, no other edition has ever really embraced the idea that miniatures and grids were required to play. This article even says as much. So if that is the case, why weren't those other editions reaching these epic proportions of wealth and prosperity as this edition?

Obviously, there are other factors involved. Coming off the heels of a less popular edition and a splintered community, 5e is the "classic Coke" to 4e's "new Coke". Old fans who may have lapsed during the short tenure of the new product returned in droves to see the old formula reinstated and better than ever. Coupled with the advantage of technology, streaming and social culture, slower product release, and a dozen other minor points, it is the "perfect storm" for the "perfect" edition. 

The point is, however, that minis are as irrelevant (or relevant) as they ever were. They are not a feature of the game, but an indulgence for collectors, enthusiasts, and many who crave that visual stimulus and instant gratification. Let's face it, some of us don't have the luxury or talent to dream everything we say. Blockbuster special effects movies will always draw more audiences than less visually stimulating films, or the books they're based on. 

That said, was the opposite true for 4e? Did the reliance of minis cause it to fail? Again, there are always more factors involved. But let me direct your attention somewhere that seems to be completely ignored in this discussin: Paizo, Pathfinder, and Pawns.

Many consider Paizo to be the underdog, but Pathfinder is as relevant to any discussion of D&D as D&D itself. Based on 3/3.5e rules, which began leaning towards a bigger push for miniature usage later in it's run, Paizo eventually came up with an affordable solution with heavy cardboard stock punch out "minis", Pawns. Visually less appealing than fully painted 3D models of every monster, the cardboard solution gave players a practical solution for acquiring all the various figures needed for a typical encounter without having to spend hundreds of dollars attempting to acquire the precise figures found in randomized sets. And what better way to support their own line of products, like their popular Adventure Paths, than with a full set of figures available in one purchase? And then there's the Battlemaps... you can see where this going.

In this case, I don't see removing miniatures as the saving grace for this edition. Miniatures and grids are as relevant and irrelevant at the table as they always were. 4e appealed mostly to those who enjoyed a more tactical style of game, and Pathfinder 2e appears to be heading in that direction. But PF2 may succeed where 4e failed because of how they market their miniature/grid-based accessories--a lower cost point for a quality product, and access to the components you need for an entire product rather than a randomized model to force consumers to spend constantly on acquisition instead of enjoyment.


----------



## cmad1977

I only use minis when it’s really important. Mostly don’t need them but occasionally they’re useful.
Even on Roll20 I don’t use tokens for every fight.


----------



## Sunseeker

I think people whine way too much about minis.  Literally_ anything_ can be a mini.  I've used pewter minis, I've used plastic minis, I've used LEGO minifigs, I've used dice, I've used pennies.  This isn't like World of Warcraft where you need to actually _create your character_ in order to play.  Also: Almost every D&Der I know _loves_ minis!  People complaining about a $5 mini being a barrier to entry to a game whose player-facing book is $50 and a standard set of dice is another $5-$15 is just silly.  

But I've heard these complaints for years.  And if WOTC thinks the non-requirement of minis is the "saving grace" of this edition, or even one of many, I think they're kidding themselves.


----------



## Aenghus

Some players feel constrained by minis and a map and others feel in the dark without them. There are a lot of factors including how visually oriented the participants are  vs how well theatre of the mind play works for them.

Myself, I'm visually oriented and theatre of the mind play doesn't work well for me. I haven't bought a single 5e product and am still playing 4e.


----------



## TerraDave

Jester David said:


> I find this interesting, as I raised this point on the Paizo forums regarding Pathfinder 2 and making that game more friendly to play without minis. And there was surprising pushback.




They know they have to preserve their niche of appealing to the more hardcore, tactical player. Its ironic, as that space overlaps with 4e...but they are probably right in assuming minis as the default.


----------



## R_Chance

For us it always involved miniatures (and still does), but then we went straight from playing miniature games to D&D. TSR made its living selling miniature rules. The fact that there is less mention of miniatures in the original game has to do with the assumption that players would have / use Chainmail. It saved pages in the product, and either sold another TSR product or saved customers from essentially buying the same material twice. An alternative system was provided for combat of course, involving a 20 sided die (or more likely chits back in the day). We liked the alternative method and by the time the Greyhawk supplement came out in 1975 I think it was pretty much the standard method. Still, miniatures were a big part of our games and, judging by advertising in The Strategic Review and The Dragon that was typical. I miss collecting and painting miniatures, but when you have limited time and a large collection its hard to justify more. Especially to the wife 

What is really odd, is sitting here while people discuss the history of something that is still so current in your life...


----------



## Dungeonosophy

Back in the 80s, I was a DM for BECMI D&D. I never understood how miniatures would be useful, or even what the rules would be to use them. We occasionally put down some sort of jury-rigged tokens to mark marching order, and that was it. When I saw advertisements for miniatures, I thought they looked cool, and I even bought like two or three, but they were just nice little "D&D statues" to me. At the most, I just used it as a symbol of marching order. That's just the way we rolled.


----------



## Eirikrautha

No.  I've played since '81, mostly without miniatures.  We used none for 1e or 2e.  The rules set could have been used for minis, but the flavor of the game didn't require them (more on this in a moment).  When 3e (and especially 3.5 and/or Pathfinder later) landed, miniatures contributed to the way the game played, but also to the expense.  My groups used them mostly, which is ironic since we never did before.  We won't speak of 4e (World of Wardungeons & Dragons).

Amusingly, my group now exclusively uses maps and minis for 5e.  The reality is that software like Roll20 has made maps and minis very affordable and easy to use.  Many of the bookkeeping tasks of the DM can be folded in to the map and minis (tracking initiative, hps, etc), making it a net positive.

Also, if you look at the way the game has changed, the flavor has moved towards class customization (whereas in the earlier editions, the class was the customization!).  Many of the newer features of the game work better when you can see the relative positions of the combatants (who is within 5', how many enemies are in a 20' cube, etc.).  Before, we fudged it.  Digital tools now mean a clearer picture, which adds to the utility of the modern flavor of 5e.


----------



## AmerginLiath

Having played since the late eighties, it wasn’t until well into 3.5 that I ever played with miniatures with a grid. That’s not to say that games before that didn’t involve drawing a quick map on scratch paper with Xs and arrows that looked like a coach’s play sheet, nor does it mean players didn’t buy and paint minis of their characters (we liked to bring them to games and set them up in marching order). But using a full grid and full set of miniatures always felt alien whenever myself or others would try it because it felt so constraining, so literally boxing us in.

I keep commenting on the difference between generation and edition in gaming, and I think this is one of those. The notion of using digital tools to further enunciate where everything is in the dungeon — so a player can’t creatively tell the DM he’s reaching for the torch sconce after he’s been disarmed (the DM having never mentioned a torch sconce, just commented on torch light) because everything is mapped out graphically — isn’t a plus to those of us who played D&D on long car rides and the like.


----------



## Lanefan

Our crew has used minis since day 1, long before I got involved.  We also use a grid for mapping things out, but we're nowhere near as married to it as 3e-4e seem to expect.

Non-minis (or non-visual) gaming just lends itself to ceaseless arguments about who and-or what is where in relation to everyone/thing else.


----------



## Mark Craddock

I played AD&D 2E, D&D RC, and D&D 3.x without minis. We went to minis for 4E.

My groups currently prefer minis for 5E, so I use them.


----------



## Unpossible E

Cergorach said:


> While 3(.5)E didn't require miniatures, it was the most popular edition since the 80s. 5E still needs a lot of sales to catch up to that.




Back in 2016 D&D 5 had already crushed 3.5, (per Mike Mearls), and it's become even more popular since then.


----------



## Rhone1

Unpossible E said:


> Back in 2016 D&D 5 had already crushed 3.5, (per Mike Mearls), and it's become even more popular since then.




Good friend of mine from college works for Hasbro.  He said the same thing.  D&D 5.0 has sold a lot more than 3.5.  He said that it wasn't even close.


----------



## Jay Verkuilen

vpuigdoller said:


> My friends and I play online using roll20 and we do use maps and tokens but we didnt before when we played in person.  We tried it theater when we switched but was very confusing for majority of the group.  I have heard from other groups that when they switched to online gaming they had to start using maps and tokens as well too idk.




I agree. I never played with minis back in the old days. College apartments, not enough money, lack of artistic talent, etc., meant we had few. I did get a bunch of metal painted by a talented guy I knew who did it for a reasonable cost in the 3.5 days and still have some of those. Even so, minis were optional, though they definitely helped a lot. 

What we did start doing in the mid '90s a lot was the paper tactical map or battlemap done with markers and maybe a few tokens. A piece of paper, a pencil, and some quick sketches went a long way to establishing the nature of the situation and as time went on the call of "can I get a tactical?" became more common. What we didn't have was a lot of formal tactical rules though we had a number of group heuristics to handle the lack of formal maps. For instance, we would give negating saves to a few monsters vs. area effect attacks to represent the fact that they might be on the edge of the effect and thus take no damage. We would often have a caster make an Intelligence check to target a spell. We never really did think of Attacks of Opportunity or good reach rules, though. 

The tendency was there in 3.X already with the introduction of map-reliant tactical things like Attacks of Opportunity. I don't have any 3.X books anymore but I'm pretty sure that they said "Minis are great, use them." 4E just continued that and made it a key part of the business strategy. It was quite obvious that 4E was explicitly designed with minis in mind and WotC clearly intended to push minis, though that seemed to flop. It was almost a minis game and was designed to compete with the numerous mini games around at the time, along with having a lot of things pulled in from competitors like WoW. 

As far as today, the online world, lacking the information-rich environment that comes with all being in the same room together really benefits from a map. In general I try to come up with something decent but there can be some real limitations due to lack of good maps (or time/ability to draw them). One thing I have found playing with a map has changed is the kinds of encounters I run. I used to run much more simple things like, oh, 8 orcs, due to the fact that without a map it was often easier to do that. That kind of encounter seems rather troublesome for a map, so I tend to run larger set pieces when I go through the trouble of making a map. On the other hand, I would also run in multiple dimensions or other things that are hard to depict on a map, so there are some definite advantages not using one.


----------



## Ace

Playing D&D theater of mind  is not a new thing. My groups played  1e and 2e and 3e and 3.5 as well as Pathfinder  sans miniatures without any issues (we never played 4) 

In any case lending a character a figure and teaching them how to use the grid is a very low barrier of entry.  

Now there was loads of fantasy in the 1980's but it was never  as mainstream as it is now  and it was somewhat age segregated, middle aged people with few exceptions didn't play, women played in smaller numbers and while many people you wouldn't expect whiled away a summer playing, it was a kids/young adult thing 

What's helping D&D  now and this is my opinion here is that fantasy is more popular than ever and new  people are exposed to the tropes via video games, streaming play and the myriad of books and   movies . This has lead to a broader player base which is great for the hobby 

A last thing, the last time D&D was hugely popular was when the rules were simple and streamlined like they were in Basic/Expert. Overly complex games can act as a barrier of entry for a lot of otherwise great players. Now there is market for such things, Rolemaster is still out there and GURPS is doing every well but on the whole, its a niche within the hobby 

5E balances the various aspects very well, low barrier of entry but enough meat for  more experienced  gamers. It might be the best D&D yet


----------



## R_Chance

I think pretty much everyone who started in 1974-76 were miniature gamers, and most used miniatures. The numbers dilute as you go out from there. We continued our war gaming habits; using rulers / yardsticks to measure distance outdoors, using templates for areas of effect, and laying out terrain as needed. D&D was an extension of our miniature gaming. From the beginning I laid out "dungeons" on graph paper (10' to the square) and used cardstock with 1 inch squares penciled on it (equal to 5') for indoor combat. Town, village, lairs and castles ended up being laid out dungeon style on graph paper. My dad was an engineer and we had access to large rolls of graph paper (up to 42" wide and measured in yards). My players were very tactical in their approach (wargamers...), they were aware of cover, chokepoints, lines of sight and so on. We had a blast. It was a series of skirmish level battles played out with miniatures. The game just kept supplying us with new scenarios. My group loved the social / roleplaying aspects too. D@mn, I was lucky


----------



## Jay Verkuilen

Ace said:


> Playing D&D theater of mind  is not a new thing.




Definitely.  





> What's helping D&D  now and this is my opinion here is that fantasy is more popular than ever and new  people are exposed to the tropes via video games, streaming play and the myriad of books and   movies . This has lead to a broader player base which is great for the hobby




I think this is right. It's not the giant reach for a lot of people it used to be.


----------



## Henry

I and the groups I’m in rarely play without minis, and back in AD&D1 and AD&D2 days, we played with minis of some sort, too (back then it was Risk pieces, with the I’s and III’s representing mooks and big bad guys, and the V’s representing the PCs.) 

Since then I’ve found a LOT of people who played without minis, and it was quite the adjustment to realize I was probably in the minority. However, I note that even well-known actual plays like Critical Role and Glass Cannon still use minis, despite this article talking about how lack of minis play helps enable podcasting, etc.


----------



## Zardnaar

Never used them until 3.5. Used graph paper when it mattered before that.


----------



## Sunseeker

I'd like to add our minis are mostly representational.  We don't really use them for grid-based tactical play, and I personally don't feel they're necessary for tactical play.  I only bust out the grid when I need to draw up a picture or diagram of something the players are looking at.  Or when I'm using my Random Dungeon Tiles.  

It's really just too darn easy to bump minis around.  I've yet to come up with a good solution to that.  Would be really killer if someone made a magnetic dry-erase tile board, and magnetic mini bases.  I'd buy soooooo many of those.


----------



## Paul3

It is great that the game supports both those who use minis and those who don't, but connecting not using minis with the rise of streaming games (many/most of which do in fact use gridded combat) seems like a pretty big jump.


----------



## Riley37

You can tell the story of Eric and the Dread Gazebo, or the Head of Vecna, or the Powder Keg of Justice, without miniatures. I see that as evidence that miniatures are not at the heart of the most awesome moments in D&D.


----------



## AtomicPope

Back in 1e we used graph paper and imagination.  Now we use graph paper, minis, and imagination.  During the heyday of 3e lots of people bought minis. That was the first time used a battle mat.  Now that we already have the minis there's no going back.  We're buying new minis, battle mats, markers, and building terrain.  It's a fun part of the hobby.


----------



## Jhaelen

Meh. I'm not so sure about that. Imho, 4e had the most enjoyable tactical combat system I've ever seen in any RPG (or board game).

Even if you don't like playing with battle maps, minis (or tokens, dice, or whatever else you choose to represent the PCs and their opposition) are incredibly useful to indicate the rough position of everyone. We found that indispensable even back in the 1e days to avoid endless discussions.


----------



## Lanefan

shidaku said:


> It's really just too darn easy to bump minis around.  I've yet to come up with a good solution to that.



A lot of metal minis have bases that are too small and-or have imperfections on the base that cause them to wobble or lean over.  Gluing a penny or nickel to the base can help a lot, or a heavy plug or washer for particularly top-heavy pieces.

The downside to this, and to all plastic minis, is they then become too horizontally big to place reasonably in a small area on a standard 2-inch-to-10-foot grid.


----------



## Lanefan

Riley37 said:


> You can tell the story of Eric and the Dread Gazebo, or the Head of Vecna, or the Powder Keg of Justice, without miniatures. I see that as evidence that miniatures are not at the heart of the most awesome moments in D&D.



I can tell almost any D&D story without minis, after the fact; and all of these are stories being told after the fact.

Playing through it round by round in the here and now is a completely different matter.


----------



## Riley37

Lanefan said:


> Playing through it round by round in the here and now is a completely different matter.




Did Eric and his DM use miniatures, to play out Eric's assault on the gazebo, and the gazebo's response? 

Did the players in the Head of Vecna incident need minis to establish relative position while one of the PCs cut off the other's head?

Did the player who delivered the Powder Keg of Justice speech have a mini on a board, at the time, and did it matter whether the paladin was 1 square or 2 squares away from the captured cultist?

You write as if the combat pillar were the entire game. It's a part of the game; it's how the game *started*; but some of the Great Moments in D&D History happened in the other pillars.


----------



## billd91

Lanefan said:


> I can tell almost any D&D story without minis, after the fact; and all of these are stories being told after the fact.
> 
> Playing through it round by round in the here and now is a completely different matter.




It’s not that different if you’re clear with your descriptions as DM and players ask questions and are also reasonably clear about their positioning. It just takes a little practice - and puts us right back where we were when we started playing Basic and 1e and didn’t own a megamat. And that’s right where we like to be.


----------



## pemerton

I have generally adapted my use of techniques to a system and its expectations.

Back (a long time ago) when I used to GM B/X and AD&D, in dungeon exploration games, I would track the PCs' position on a grid map.

When I started GMing a less dungeon-y sort of game (using AD&D and then Rolemaster), that sort of position-tracking became less important but occasionally I would draw a little picture of the lay of the land where that would be helpful for keeping track of people's positions. A relevant factor is that in those systems, the ranges of effects, movement rates, etc often mean that you only need to track separation in general terms, and - if a fight breaks out or is in the offing - "rounds until engaged" rather than detailed positioning.

When I GM 4e, I normally used grid maps and tokens as part of the framing and adjudication of combat, as the system relies heavily on the details of positioning. (It's not just "how many rounds until we engage?")

When I GM Marvel Heroic RP/Cortex+ Heroic, I don't use any maps or tokens, as the mechanics of that system don't involve that sort of detailed positioning at all.


----------



## lowkey13

*Deleted by user*


----------



## VengerSatanis

I'm just happy you mentioned the Old School Renaissance!


----------



## Kobold Boots

lowkey13 said:


> "
> I don't know about the (singular) saving grace; I do know that there is some number of players and DMs (including me) that would not play it if miniatures were a requirement. And considering that I (and, I assume, people/grognards like me) are teaching a new generation of people to play D&D, I think that matters at least a little, right?




I think this is another one of those discussions where the game needs to support minis with rules but doesn't need to make them mandatory.  Let the DMs and players do what's right for them.

Honestly, and this goes for a lot of things in life, the knee jerk massive pendulum swing responses to problems needs to be avoided.  "4e had a problem, it must be minis so lets not include them at all in the game and go 180 in the other direction" is flawed.  If anything that data should show that giving people choice expands the market.  However, I'm sure there's some budget reason or deadline reason to back up why writers can't just create a system to support flavorful mini based combat without taking over the whole system in the process.  4e shouldn't have gone as far as it did, but 5 going full on in the other direction isn't good (in my opinion) either.

KB


----------



## lowkey13

*Deleted by user*


----------



## Kobold Boots

lowkey13 said:


> Maybe. There is a fine line between support, and taking over the system.
> 
> For example, I can tell you from experience that 5e supports minis- but in the same way that older editions did. There are various rules and options that are infinitely "better" with minis than without. To give you an easy example- a feat like mobile is meh with TOTM, but outstanding if you are playing with a grid (esp. in combination with, say, a monk).
> 
> That is why it is a YMMV-type of situation.




Completely agree, but my mileage doesn't get to vary as much if I don't have better rules support for using the minis.  Therein lay the problem. Of course, the best solution for me is to write my own rules as relying on any set of authors to write something good for me is a low probability outcome sort of like winning the lotto.


----------



## Flexor the Mighty!

We never used minis during the pre 3.x era, though hit was obvious that 1e had a lot of stuff that would work with them, movement in inches and whatnot.  For 3.0 I really go into that and that carried over to the 5e games.  My S&W game will probably resemble a table top wargame at times with all the terrain and crap I've been making for other wargames.  I love painting them and their utility though there is a drawback since players don't have to pay as much attention I find.


----------



## Lanefan

Riley37 said:


> Did Eric and his DM use miniatures, to play out Eric's assault on the gazebo, and the gazebo's response?
> 
> Did the players in the Head of Vecna incident need minis to establish relative position while one of the PCs cut off the other's head?
> 
> Did the player who delivered the Powder Keg of Justice speech have a mini on a board, at the time, and did it matter whether the paladin was 1 square or 2 squares away from the captured cultist?



In all of these cases, as I wasn't there at the time and thus don't know what other factors may/may not have been involved, I can only answer with "I don't know".  But to carry on with the example, if one PC is cutting off another's head to replace it with the Head of Vecna and my PC wants to intervene and prevent this, having minis or some other visual representation would quickly tell me whether I'm close enough to even attempt such.



> You write as if the combat pillar were the entire game. It's a part of the game; it's how the game *started*; but some of the Great Moments in D&D History happened in the other pillars.



Combat's not the only pillar of the game, I fully agree.

But it is the pillar that most requires minis or some other form of visual representation of what/who is where.  With 7 PCs fighting 6 Orcs, an Ogre and 3 Giant Badgers in a mostly-open field, yeah I want something more concrete than just imagination to tell me where everything is in relation to everything else, because I know I'll never keep it straight otherwise.



			
				billd91 said:
			
		

> It’s not that different if you’re clear with your descriptions as DM and players ask questions and are also reasonably clear about their positioning. It just takes a little practice - and puts us right back where we were when we started playing Basic and 1e and didn’t own a megamat. And that’s right where we like to be.



Even using minis etc. I've - both as player and DM - got into arguments over the positioning of things, largely because no matter how clearly someone thinks he or she is describing something somebody is going to:
- misinterpret what's being said; the DM is trying to describe one scene but the player is from those words picturing something quite different
- mix up left and right or north and south or some other simple thing
- not hear everything correctly
- interrupt the description (and thus the DM's train of thought) such that something relevant gets left out

Not using minis just makes this a thousand times worse...and this is assuming good-faith play from all involved, which also isn't always the case.

Lanefan


----------



## cmad1977

Lanefan said:


> In all of these cases, as I wasn't there at the time and thus don't know what other factors may/may not have been involved, I can only answer with "I don't know".  But to carry on with the example, if one PC is cutting off another's head to replace it with the Head of Vecna and my PC wants to intervene and prevent this, having minis or some other visual representation would quickly tell me whether I'm close enough to even attempt such.
> 
> Combat's not the only pillar of the game, I fully agree.
> 
> But it is the pillar that most requires minis or some other form of visual representation of what/who is where.  With 7 PCs fighting 6 Orcs, an Ogre and 3 Giant Badgers in a mostly-open field, yeah I want something more concrete than just imagination to tell me where everything is in relation to everything else, because I know I'll never keep it straight otherwise.
> 
> Even using minis etc. I've - both as player and DM - got into arguments over the positioning of things, largely because no matter how clearly someone thinks he or she is describing something somebody is going to:
> - misinterpret what's being said; the DM is trying to describe one scene but the player is from those words picturing something quite different
> - mix up left and right or north and south or some other simple thing
> - not hear everything correctly
> - interrupt the description (and thus the DM's train of thought) such that something relevant gets left out
> 
> Not using minis just makes this a thousand times worse...and this is assuming good-faith play from all involved, which also isn't always the case.
> 
> Lanefan




This a table issue. Not a ‘minis or no minis’ issue.


----------



## Lanefan

cmad1977 said:


> This a table issue. Not a ‘minis or no minis’ issue.



It's a table issue that can be greatly mitigated with minis and a map, and thus is also a minis/no minis issue.


----------



## Kobold Boots

Question: 

Is this really a minis vs. no minis matter or is it a "I'm willing to spend money on minis vs. I'm not spending money on minis" issue?

Cause heck, even before I had money to spend on things, I needed to use markers or dice or pennies to note ranges as others have said.  

KB


----------



## Lanefan

Kobold Boots said:


> Question:
> 
> Is this really a minis vs. no minis matter or is it a "I'm willing to spend money on minis vs. I'm not spending money on minis" issue?



I hadn't even considered that aspect of it.

I kind of internally assumed the phrase "assuming reasonable access to minis or equivalent" as being part of the question.

But yes, if you're starting from scratch "proper" minis can get expensive in a hurry.  That said, your local dollar store will (probably) have some cheap DM-side alternatives:
- packs of little plastic dinosaurs and animals that can be used for monsters
- packs of replacement game pawns that can also be used for monsters (and which work great for this, as I can attest!) 
- packs of toy soldiers or equivalent that can be used for all sorts of things
- replacement poker chips that can be used as tokens to indicate invisibility, flight, or whatever other conditions need to be tracked

Kitting yourself out with all the above should leave you with some change from ten bucks.

Then, all you have to do is ask each player to provide a mini for each character he-she plays.  Individual minis can be had for under $5; the only headache can be finding a place that'll sell them individually, so you might have to buy online and wait for it to arrive.

So, overall not as great a barrier to entry as one might assume. 

Lanefan


----------



## Dannyalcatraz

I know game tables that used typical plastic board game pieces, Monopoly pieces, pebbles, bottle caps, glass go/pente pieces (also sold as planter/aquarium strata), tiddlywinks, jelly beans, and what have you as game pieces.  I’ve done likewise myself.  (And I have THOUSANDS of metal and plastic minis.)

Heck, when one guy in my group mistakenly wrote up his Paladin as “6’5” and 135 lbs”, I stuck a sewing machine needle into a cork and handed it to him.*

So, no, you don’t have to spend big bucks to have physical representations of characters for combat.





* which actually inspired me to do something else along those lines.  I take simple sewing needles or pins, put them through beads, and mount THOSE in cork or plastic bases to mark centerpointa of AoEs without using templates.


----------



## aramis erak

Only one edition truly needed mapped out play - 4th - even though most editions suggest their use.

Original _Edition_ doesn't need them, but _the players_ of the time often did.


----------



## Ranger REG

To answer your question:

*HELL YES!*


----------



## Parmandur

In years of 3.x play, my college group used physical representation for combat one, and only one, time. We just played sitting around the living room and it was all in our heads.

I wouldn't say that de-emphasizing minatures is a factor of 5E's success, because I have bought and used minis for 5E unlike during 3.x, but requiring minatures 100% was a factor in 4E's failure to launch.


----------



## pogre

I love miniatures. I spend ridiculous amounts of money on minis, terrain, and paints. I spend hours and hours painting. I make a great effort to make sure every npc and monster is represented with a miniature. I love laying out yards and yards of master maze and Hirst Arts. I frequently craft scenery for one scene of an adventure.

Yet, I am super glad this edition does not require miniatures. Lots of folks find theater of the mind much more satisfying and are having a blast with 5e.

That's the way it should be. Let's all have fun!


----------



## jasper

Gee even as I was buying my 1E PHB in the book store there was a shelf of stuff which said "Approved to use with Advance Dungeons and Dragons". This included pc sheets, blue dice with a fat crayon, some special hex graph paper, some special regular graph paper, and boxes of lead minis. 
So I say minis were always a part of the game. Now some us could not afford minis, and some only bought a couple. You could also buy wet erase square inch mats, and hex one inch mats. I have played with people who have no problem with theatre of mind, and others who could lose themselves in their own houses.


----------



## Parmandur

Cergorach said:


> While 3(.5)E didn't require miniatures, it was the most popular edition since the 80s. 5E still needs a lot of sales to catch up to that. But as the results of the 2000 research indicate, around half the people use miniatures, going either way exclusively excludes half your player base.
> 
> But blaming minis for the 4E failure is far too shortsighted, 4E had more problems then that. We quite often used minis in combat, especially when I was DM I would often get some impressive looking minis to the table. But sometimes using minis on a grid wasn't what was required of the scene, so we could work without. Our group liked using minis since Basic D&D (boxed sets with poster maps for minis) and AD&D 2E, it had for many fond memories of games that lead to D&D for them (HeroQuest)... I found 4E a very strong technical game, but it utterly lacked in style (motivation to play), something 2E, 3E, Pathfinder and 5E has more then enough of. If anything, the combat was designed for a group like mine, but it completely lacked soul.



As has already been pointed out, 5E surpassed the lifetime combined sales of 3.0 and 3.5 years ago and continues to sell briskly, but I am curious: what was your basis for thinking 3.x sold better...?


----------



## lowkey13

*Deleted by user*


----------



## D1Tremere

New/casual players seem to enjoy the reduction in the learning curve, while more advanced players begin to desire more combat tactics and mechanical depth. Both audiences can be served with any edition of D&D, but 4E and 5E reduce the learning curve while offering nothing to grow into IMHO.


----------



## Flexor the Mighty!

I just love playing with toys so minis are a huge boon there.   Plus I find I really love making terrain.  I'm goofy like that.


----------



## DM Howard

I think it comes down to how you learn.  There are visual learners and there are non-visual learners.  I bet there is a correlation in there somewhere.


----------



## Erdric Dragin

We did play without miniatures for awhile only because 2E AD&D didn't state any requirement of them. 

However, after a couple of months of just starting we all did realize how extremely difficult it was to run combat without some kind of visual representation. So we bought ourselves graph paper and penciled in drawings of the terrain and letters to represent the enemies and PCs, used an eraser to change things around (We were young, it was the best we could afford).

As to this day, I don't think I can ever run combat scenes without miniatures and a map. Knowing where everything is and keeping track of it is key to making combat run smoothly.


----------



## The Crimson Binome

It's not even really about the players, as much as it's about the DM and their ability to visualize what's going on; and more importantly, their ability to convey what they visualize to the players.

The difference between a grid with miniatures and theater-of-the-mind is that the latter requires the DM to track everything mentally, and inform the players of every relevant detail, rather than just pointing at a physical representation and letting the players see for themselves. None of the rules actually change. A lightning bolt will hit the exact same number of orcs in either model, as long as the DM is doing their job.


----------



## Riley37

It is convenient, familiar, and comfortable to participants in this thread to line up into "D&D is better with minis!!" versus "D&D is better without minis!" We can supplement that with a side conversation on whether that means figurines on a battlemat, or any kind of token on ordinary graph paper, or the beautiful tokens and maps you can use for free (with a ruler tool!) on Roll20. It is convenient, familiar, and comfortable to say "this is how I like to play", and compare one grogard's preferred play style to another.

All of those convenient, familiar, and comfortable arguments, have this in common: they avoid the question as asked. The question as asked isn't about the experience of *anyone* who has played so much TRPG that they've become an EN World participant. The question is about the experience of new players trying D&D for the first time, and whether those players come back for more.

Kobold Boots raised the question of whether we're arguing "minis vs. no minis", or dedicated minis vs. improvised tokens. That said, the meta-question goes even deeper: whether EN World participants are willing to put any thought into how people go from "I've never tried D&D" to "I tried it once" to "I wanna play it again". Thinking about the experience of someone who isn't an EN World grognard - now THAT is a radical challenge, and I don't see many EN World participants willing to go that far out of their comfort zones.


----------



## Dannyalcatraz

> Kobold Boots raised the question of whether we're arguing "minis vs. no minis", or dedicated minis vs. improvised tokens. That said, the meta-question goes even deeper: whether EN World participants are willing to put any thought into how people go from "I've never tried D&D" to "I tried it once" to "I wanna play it again". Thinking about the experience of someone who isn't an EN World grognard - now THAT is a radical challenge, and I don't see many EN World participants willing to go that far out of their comfort zones.




My first experience with D&D was with minis in a school library*.  The next city I lived in, my group played at the cafeteria tables over lunch- pure TotM.

I’ve also had the pleasure of initiating kids AND adults into the hobby, so I have HAD to think about what kind of experiences I wanted my rookies to have.




* East Middle School, Aurora, CO...1977!


----------



## Myrdin Potter

I prefer miniatures but have been playing for close to 40 years (mainly as a DM) and never felt they were required. Loose change or a few scribbles on a piece of paper do fine and always have when players needed a visual reference.


----------



## pemerton

Kobold Boots said:


> Question:
> 
> Is this really a minis vs. no minis matter or is it a "I'm willing to spend money on minis vs. I'm not spending money on minis" issue?
> 
> Cause heck, even before I had money to spend on things, I needed to use markers or dice or pennies to note ranges as others have said.





Dannyalcatraz said:


> I know game tables that used typical plastic board game pieces, Monopoly pieces, pebbles, bottle caps, glass go/pente pieces (also sold as planter/aquarium strata), tiddlywinks, jelly beans, and what have you as game pieces.  I’ve done likewise myself.



This is what I use when GMing 4e. Token do the job; there's no need for "minis" in the literal sense. In the literal sense, I've never used miniatures including in dozens and dozens of sessions GMing 4e.

I didn't (and don't) use tokens GMing other systems, as they don't have resolution systems that invoke the sort of detail that makes them necessary.



lowkey13 said:


> There are various rules and options that are infinitely "better" with minis than without. To give you an easy example- a feat like mobile is meh with TOTM, but outstanding if you are playing with a grid (esp. in combination with, say, a monk).



And to reverse the order of reasoning, if one is playing a system which is full of "mobile"-like capabilities, then it makes sense to use minis/tokens. (4e is an instance of this.) And vice versa - if one is not, then minis become less useful. (I would put AD&D and B/X in this category, based on my experience, and many other RPGs as well.)



Riley37 said:


> The question as asked isn't about the experience of *anyone* who has played so much TRPG that they've become an EN World participant. The question is about the experience of new players trying D&D for the first time, and whether those players come back for more.
> 
> Kobold Boots raised the question of whether we're arguing "minis vs. no minis", or dedicated minis vs. improvised tokens. That said, the meta-question goes even deeper: whether EN World participants are willing to put any thought into how people go from "I've never tried D&D" to "I tried it once" to "I wanna play it again". Thinking about the experience of someone who isn't an EN World grognard - now THAT is a radical challenge, and I don't see many EN World participants willing to go that far out of their comfort zones.



I can't judge whether minis make the game more attractive or not from a market/growth point of view. (Obviously they make it more _expensive_, but some boardgames sell themselves on nice components, and minis can be part of that sort of experience.)

But I think there is a meta-question (different from yours) that is more interesting than minis vs no-minis  (and unlike yours, it's one I'm competent to try and answer!): what features of a system, or of the way someone is playing, make minis useful/necessary; conversely, what sort of system and approach to play supports a mini-free game?


----------



## Dannyalcatraz

> what features of a system, or of the way someone is playing, make minis useful/necessary; conversely, what sort of system and approach to play supports a mini-free game?




IMHO, the strongest driver for minis use is mechanics that use precise language of distance and relative position, _especially_ at tabletop scale: powers or gear with ranges measured in inches; limiting attacks or other abilities to certain angles or facings.

The use of real world scaled mechanics like “40 foot range”, “accurate to 500m” are more directly relatable- thus, more within the scope of TotM-  than expressing the same in inches, squares or hexes.  

Simply answering the questions of “can I see/can I attack” a target or targets with yes or no is more imagination friendly than saying a character can’t attack someone because their facing is wrong.


...not that TotM CAN’T be done with mechanics expressed thusly, just that it’s more difficult.


----------



## Riley37

pemerton said:


> I think there is a meta-question (different from yours) that is more interesting than minis vs no-minis  (and unlike yours, it's one I'm competent to try and answer!): what features of a system, or of the way someone is playing, make minis useful/necessary; conversely, what sort of system and approach to play supports a mini-free game?




Are you open to reframing that as tokens vs. no-tokens?

or perhaps as a three-way split, (A) spatially imprecise or TotM (B) minis, preferably 25mm hand-painted (c) tokens of any sort, including virtual tokens, on pixel maps, displayed on a screen?

Some percentage of the growth in D&D, during the 5E era, is online play. Five players, around a table, each with a laptop; or five players, in five different cities; that sort of thing. The former still gets to share pizza. The latter has a host of complications including the role of body language in communication. Online play can involve *tokens*, but will not involve hand-painted minis. So these questions overlap.


----------



## pemerton

Riley37 said:


> Are you open to reframing that as tokens vs. no-tokens?



Absolutely. As far as I can tell (not being a literal-minis person, I might be wrong), the difference between minis in the literal sense, and tokens, is purely aesthetic (unless facing matters, I guess, and even then some tokens support facing). It doesn't go to system or approach to play.

What I was trying to get at is something like this: in AD&D, engagement in melee is all or nothing, and positioning vs multiple opponents is primarily a function of numbers (the defender being assumed always to bring his/her shield to bear, etc); and so mostly (in my experience) one only needs to track the time needed to close and the range for spells and missiles; and that can be done without minis/tokens.

Whereas 4e, with many of a PC's abilities pertaining to fine-grained movement of self and/or others within the melee context, makes positioning within melee very important to resolution, and so strongly invites the use of tokens/minis. (I've run some 4e combats, where the terrain is simple and the main issue is one of separation between combatants, without map and tokens just as I would in AD&D or Rolemaster; but in my experience not many 4e combats have that character.)

Where I think a discussion like this could go is (eg): the no-minis approach to AD&D or RM adjudication (are you in range? how long does it take to close?) gives the GM a fair bit of control over those features of resolution, because - typically, I think - it is the GM's "mental map" that is taken as the most canonical for the table, unless someone can point out that s/he has obviously overlooked or misremembered something. The 4e approach makes all those bits of resolution more "objective" or "shared" (take your pick; they may be synonyms, or may not be, but I'm not pushing hard on that at this point!). Does that make 4e "better"? Or "worse"? Is there a reason (eg the stuff in 4e comes up all the time, whereas closing and range in AD&D are more peripheral? are those who use minis/tokens in AD&D trying to achieve more "objectivity"?)


----------



## fjw70

I love minis and have a huge collection of them. But I use minis and totm pretty equally in my games. It just depends on the situation.

Back when I played 1e we didn’t use minis, then I joined a group that did use them (no grid just used them on the table top) and I was hooked. I didn’t actually start buying minis until my reintroduction to D&D in the 2000s (after no playing since 1989).


----------



## Gibili

Did removing miniatures save D&D?  "Save" is perhaps too strong a  term, but in concunction with the rise of people watching streaming of  all sorts, online gaming, I think is has certainly boosted sales more than a reworking  of 4e would have done.  We played with the 4e rules but never really  enjoyed them.   Battles became too much about tactics and stacking  abilties than about story telling and player interaction, which is where  the most fun bits of RPGs lie for us as a group.
I have certainly  watched new players really struggle to have fun whilst playing with the  4e rules because of the tactical nature of them.  In that regard, for me  personally, 5e is a huge improvement as it is much more widely  inclusive.  If you want to use minis then feel free.  If you don't, then don't.  The key thing is  that the system is not so prejorative as to force players one way or the  other and thus can appeal to the widest audience.

The question of whether mini use is better or worse than  no mini use is as usual, unhelpfully, deliberately devisive.  I do wish  people, journalists etc would step away from this bad habit of trying to  pigeonhole everything (not aimed at anyone here I must add).  The only  right way is doing things the way that suits  you and your group, what ever that is.

We've always mixed use and non-use.  It has always been situationally dependent.  If having a physical represenatation helps then we do it.   If it doesn't add anything then we don't.  As others have written here, it's been useful to set out and remember marching order on many occasions, or who is next to who.   Sometimes it doesn't matter if everyone has a different view in their mind's eye of what is going on, and sometimes it does.
We use dedicated minis, dice, bottle tops, bits of paper, what ever comes to hand.  Recently we fought a tense, fighting retreat of a battle against a bunch of hideous aliens, represented by a mixture of physical forms, including one particularly nasty alien that was represented on the table by a small, pink, rubber hippo.  To be fair, there was something even more scary about it looking like that.    On the other hand, as a side line to playing, I love creating highly customised minis for each character in the group.  It's certainly not necessary, I'm not all that good at it, but I find it fun thing to do.


----------



## pemerton

fjw70 said:


> Back when I played 1e we didn’t use minis, then I joined a group that did use them (no grid just used them on the table top)



We've used the table as a play surface for tokens in our 4e game - with adjanency being used to signal "squares", or a gap between tokens signalling an empty square, etc. We've also used the table to supplement maps when distances are big (eg "the bread board is 20 squares between these two bits of grid paper").


----------



## Kobold Boots

Gibili said:


> The question of whether mini use is better or worse than  no mini use is as usual, unhelpfully, deliberately devisive.  I do wish  people, journalists etc would step away from this bad habit of trying to  pigeonhole everything (not aimed at anyone here I must add).  The only  right way is doing things the way that suits  you and your group, what ever that is.




All I'll add here is that I don't blame a website with a strong community from publishing articles that have a "this or that" perspective as there's a lot to be said for driving conversation and ultimately traffic.

I do think that there's a social responsibility to avoid certain types of topics when it's clear that the threads on those fail to go well repeatedly but you have to break some eggs to figure out what will and won't fly.

Nuff said, because this conversation about minis is entirely civil and good to see.


----------



## Ratskinner

I never used minis until the phrase "attack of opportunity" was invented. Although we did tend to have some kind of visualization of the battlespace, I rarely measured anything. I don't think its the minis themselves so much as a heavy rule dependence on the spatial reality of the game. The early edition rules about space and positioning were easily handwaved. Not so much with 3e or 4e.

My daughter plays 5e and her group uses little plastic superheroes, etc. They don't grid things, and play much more resembles my old 2e days.

I do think that minidependence is a barrier, because it makes it harder to play casually. This is supposed to be game, right?


----------



## Kobold Boots

Ratskinner said:


> .
> 
> I do think that minidependence is a barrier, because it makes it harder to play casually. This is supposed to be game, right?




Great point +1

Do I think I'd introduce players to the game with a mini heavy slugfest?  No, not at all.
Do I think that I'd need minis when a storyline required a combat heavy or combat exclusive session?  Yes, absolutely.


----------



## Eltab

I prefer minis (because I am an amateur tactician) but I can see where 4e was overly mini-centric.  Emphasizing 'theater of the mind' and 'story-telling' and '_co-operative_ play' allows you to skip the extra expense and shopping time.  Also 5e allows you to 'fudge' area bombs (_Fireball_) so Team Monster gets blasted but Team Hero doesn't tear each other up.

I'm glad more people want to play D&D, and I'm glad they found a 'middle ground' where minis can be brought into play where helpful and ignored where not.


----------



## tomBitonti

Gibili said:


> The question of whether mini use is better or worse than  no mini use is as usual, unhelpfully, deliberately devisive.  I do wish  people, journalists etc would step away from this bad habit of trying to  pigeonhole everything (not aimed at anyone here I must add).  The only  right way is doing things the way that suits  you and your group, what ever that is.




This.  Also, I find the article title "Did Removing Miniatures Save D&D" to be unhelpful.  Why do articles need to start by spiking the topic in a deliberately divisive fashion?

Was D&D in danger of dying?  Perhaps the WotC involvement was flagging, and the WotC brand of D&D was failing, but "D&D" as a whole seemed to be going fine.  Certainly, my gaming group, which was invested in 3.5E and which never moved to 4E, was doing fine.

Did removing a focus on miniatures help make D&D 5E a success?  I would say definitely yes.  (Similarly, I think the almost exclusive focus of 4E on tactical play helped to doom it.)

Do the majority of D&D games use miniatures in some fashion?  That I can't say.  But I am thinking that many use representative tokens for tactical encounters.  That includes simple tokens and standees, in addition to actual miniatures.  I'm not sure if all of that counts the same as using miniatures.  For many encounters, having a visual representation removes a whole lot of ambiguity and time spent detailing actions.

Thx!
TomB


----------



## talien

Kobold Boots said:


> I do think that there's a social responsibility to avoid certain types of topics when it's clear that the threads on those fail to go well repeatedly but you have to break some eggs to figure out what will and won't fly.




I'm all about breaking eggs...I'm just glad they haven't been thrown at me yet.


----------



## Kobold Boots

talien said:


> I'm all about breaking eggs...I'm just glad they haven't been thrown at me yet.




After the first couple they stop stinging.  I'm at the point now where people are just giving me breakfast.


----------



## Lanefan

pemerton said:


> Absolutely. As far as I can tell (not being a literal-minis person, I might be wrong), the difference between minis in the literal sense, and tokens, is purely aesthetic (unless facing matters, I guess, and even then some tokens support facing). It doesn't go to system or approach to play.
> 
> What I was trying to get at is something like this: in AD&D, engagement in melee is all or nothing, and positioning vs multiple opponents is primarily a function of numbers (the defender being assumed always to bring his/her shield to bear, etc); and so mostly (in my experience) one only needs to track the time needed to close and the range for spells and missiles; and that can be done without minis/tokens.



1e had facing rules of a sort, though I can't recall whether they were optional.  It certainly had splash rules for thrown liquids which needed clear positioning of those possibly affected.

But the biggest thing requiring almost pinpoint positioning of melee combatants was weapon reach - could you reach your intended foe or not?  Not everyone cared too much about this, but in 1e RAW it's a thing.

Positioning is also very important in 3e for flanking (sometimes) and attacks of opportunity (always).



> Whereas 4e, with many of a PC's abilities pertaining to fine-grained movement of self and/or others within the melee context, makes positioning within melee very important to resolution, and so strongly invites the use of tokens/minis.



Never mind that 4e still has to worry about AoO considerations - as does 5e, for all that.



> Where I think a discussion like this could go is (eg): the no-minis approach to AD&D or RM adjudication (are you in range? how long does it take to close?) gives the GM a fair bit of control over those features of resolution, because - typically, I think - it is the GM's "mental map" that is taken as the most canonical for the table, unless someone can point out that s/he has obviously overlooked or misremembered something. The 4e approach makes all those bits of resolution more "objective" or "shared" (take your pick; they may be synonyms, or may not be, but I'm not pushing hard on that at this point!). Does that make 4e "better"? Or "worse"? Is there a reason (eg the stuff in 4e comes up all the time, whereas closing and range in AD&D are more peripheral? are those who use minis/tokens in AD&D trying to achieve more "objectivity"?)



To the last question there, I'd say yes.  It greatly mitigates the headache of the DM imagining one thing and the player imagining another, based on the same description; which otherwise IME happens all the time.


----------



## lowkey13

*Deleted by user*


----------



## The Crimson Binome

lowkey13 said:


> But the medium is the message when it comes to D&D. I could not disagree more with the statement that ToTM and miniatures are _the exact same game,_ with just one occurring in your head. That's not how ToTM works (imo). ToTM streamlines some issues, many of them combat and distance related, for narrative purposes, and requires a bit of table trust and buy-in.



The rules for grid-less play, at least in 5E, provide convenient guidelines for approximating results without visualizing them exactly. For example, instead of stating a fixed position and declaring the fixed positions of everyone else around them, they just cut to the chase and tell you that a medium-sized creature can only have eight other medium-sized creatures adjacent. This isn't 13th Age, though, with its brute-abstract _fireballs_ that can hit exactly _X_ enemies or _Y_ enemies if you also choose to hit your teammates; your spell still hits everyone within 20' of the target point, whether friend or foe.

It's the same reality, in either case, which the DM is describing. Both rulesets accurately reflect the same information; it's just presented differently. (It's a lot like the difference between cartesian coordinates and polar coordinates, which can be used to represent the same information, but where one is often more convenient than the other depending on the nature of the task at hand.)


----------



## lowkey13

*Deleted by user*


----------



## tomBitonti

Saelorn said:


> The rules for grid-less play, at least in 5E, provide convenient guidelines for approximating results without visualizing them exactly. For example, instead of stating a fixed position and declaring the fixed positions of everyone else around them, they just cut to the chase and tell you that a medium-sized creature can only have eight other medium-sized creatures adjacent. This isn't 13th Age, though, with its brute-abstract _fireballs_ that can hit exactly _X_ enemies or _Y_ enemies if you also choose to hit your teammates; your spell still hits everyone within 20' of the target point, whether friend or foe.
> 
> It's the same reality, in either case, which the DM is describing. Both rulesets accurately reflect the same information; it's just presented differently. (It's a lot like the difference between cartesian coordinates and polar coordinates, which can be used to represent the same information, but where one is often more convenient than the other depending on the nature of the task at hand.)




I think this gets to a key issue which needs to be clarified: When we say "miniatures", do we mean simple representations put in approximate locations with only very rough attempts to have accurate distances and positions, or do we mean very precise representations, with figures in definite squares, and having very precisely defined movements and actions?

I expect that miniatures (and tokens, and whatnot) to be used very frequently in the first sense, and much less often in the second.

I don't mean to make this a 4E bashing session, but the issue really seems to be about moving the core game experience away from the tactical definite that was core to 4E.  The issue is not *miniatures* but instead having a *tactical core to the game*.  (You can play 4E with simple tokens.  Miniatures aren't what is important.)

Thx!
TomB


----------



## billd91

Lanefan said:


> 1e had facing rules of a sort, though I can't recall whether they were optional.  It certainly had splash rules for thrown liquids which needed clear positioning of those possibly affected.
> 
> But the biggest thing requiring almost pinpoint positioning of melee combatants was weapon reach - could you reach your intended foe or not?  Not everyone cared too much about this, but in 1e RAW it's a thing.




In my estimation, the reach of weapons was a much smaller issue in 1e - to the point of being largely irrelevant - because of the way the movement and combat rules worked. If you weren't in direct contact (over 10 feet away indoors, 10 yards outside) with the enemy and weren't shooting at them from range, your basic move was *Close to Striking Range*. If you were already within that 10 foot distance, you attacked. That general terminology covered all sorts of minor fiddly variations in weapon lengths and certainly helped you stay off the miniature mat.

If you needed to know who struck first at the end of a charge, you simply looked at the weapon lengths on the weapon characteristics table, noted which one was longer, and ruled they struck first. Then you went to the next shorter weapon, and so on. Where exactly were the PCs as measured on a grid? Close enough to hit each other - good enough.

Facing is only a little more complex. The player can just say that they want to move in to flank with their buddy and if the DM agrees they can move that far in a round, he can say it is so. Or he can present a choice - "You can get there and still attack this round if you cut it close and risk an AoO or you can take the extra movement to get there safely and be ready to strike next round." That gives the player the same sort of choices they have on a battle map but just makes it a little more abstract. It's not any harder, really, you just have to be able to relinquish control of picking the exact squares/hexes moved through.


----------



## The Crimson Binome

tomBitonti said:


> I think this gets to a key issue which needs to be clarified: When we say "miniatures", do we mean simple representations put in approximate locations with only very rough attempts to have accurate distances and positions, or do we mean very precise representations, with figures in definite squares, and having very precisely defined movements and actions?
> 
> I expect that miniatures (and tokens, and whatnot) to be used very frequently in the first sense, and much less often in the second.



Since there's only one underlying ruleset to D&D, it doesn't actually matter whether you use miniatures at all, or to what degree you care about their precision. Most people will use the minimum precision that they think they'll need in order to convey what needs to be conveyed. If that means a cave outline formed by a handful of dice, with a coin representing a group of goblins and a peanut representing the party, then so be it.

Something specific to the ruleset and how it's written is the maximum degree of precision which the system supports, and that's five feet. You should never need to know anyone's position more accurately than that.

The big difference between 4E and 5E is that 4E features _many_ effects which care about distances between 5' and 15', such that you would _usually_ need to stay at 5' precision while playing the game; while in 5E, you only really need to worry about it when casting certain spells.


----------



## Vondren

My current group uses them for fighting rounds. My son has fun collecting them and painting them. _ But as with most I didn’t grow up using them only 5e._


----------



## The Crimson Binome

There are other games, such as Feng Shui, where positions are deliberately kept undefined because they don't want to constrain the players in their attempts to narrate actions. In such games, the GM may not even have a full vision of the scene, because they want to keep an open mind in case a player suggests something fun that they want to throw in.

I wonder how many people are confused by the terminology, because they assume _that_ is Theater-of-the-Mind, when it only bears a superficial similarity to how the term is used in 5E.


----------



## pemerton

Ratskinner said:


> I don't think its the minis themselves so much as a heavy rule dependence on the spatial reality of the game. The early edition rules about space and positioning were easily handwaved. Not so much with 3e or 4e.



That's what I said!



Lanefan said:


> But the biggest thing requiring almost pinpoint positioning of melee combatants was weapon reach - could you reach your intended foe or not? Not everyone cared too much about this, but in 1e RAW it's a thing.



Rounds in AD&D are 1 minute, movement rates as 10s of feet per minute, and there are no rules for actually positioning in melee - only for getting cut down when you try to disengage from it!

So while weapon reach can matter (eg in establishing first strike in a charging situation; for establishing how many soldiers can work together or fight one another in a confined space; etc) I don't actually see how you need minis/tokesn to track the ways in which it matters.

(And I see that [MENTION=3400]billd91[/MENTION] has made much the same point.)


----------



## Shasarak

I only used minis in one edition of DnD.  In every other game the most fancy we got was scribbling a quick map on some paper with some X's for the enemy and some other X's for the Party.

So if removing the necessity of miniatures was a successful move then it is only returning DnD to its base roots and then trying to claiming credit.


----------



## Sunseeker

lowkey13 said:


> We tend to most closely associate with people that game the same way we do. For example, I don't know anyone into minis, but that's because I've played with the same group of people for years, and because all the kids I teach to play D&D I teach TOTM. But that's also because of my OD&D/1e TOTM background; I have always preferred TOTM to miniatures.



I play with a mixed bunch, and my playstyle is a mixed style.  I enjoy minis likely for the same reason I enjoy Transformers toys or anything else.  I'm a collector at heart.  The more unique minis I can get, the better.  

If you're curious about my particular playstyle breakdown, it's typically "minis if they're really necessary".  I'll usually draw maps on tiles and whiteboards so that people can get a better idea of what I'm describing, since I'm not always the best describer.  

Minis are, by and large for me, representational, not tactical.



> Of course, I am also aware that many people do enjoy miniatures. There's nothing wrong with that- but I try not to confuse my personal experience with universal experience. IIRC, when I ran a poll on this, a little under 60% of people on this board said that played/ran minis.



I chuckled a little when I read this.  



> Finally, I am always hesitant to assign a universal truth to cost concerns. The stater set (and OGL) is free. The PHB can often be found for $20, and the kids that I have taught often pool their money together to purchase new books as they come out on sale. You can buy all the dice you ever need for $20, $30 max (a huge vat of them). The problem with miniatures is that if you want to do it right, it can become a very expensive hobby. To paraphrase the late, great Robin Williams, "A good miniature collection is God's way of telling you that you are making too much money."
> 
> Of course, you can get the same visual and tactical benefits of a miniature collection with cardboard, or tokens, or pennies, or tiny little action figures if that's what you want.



Which I addressed in my post, of how one can use "just about anything" as a mini.  



> I don't know about the (singular) saving grace; I do know that there is some number of players and DMs (including me) that would not play it if miniatures were a requirement. And considering that I (and, I assume, people/grognards like me) are teaching a new generation of people to play D&D, I think that matters at least a little, right?



I think the issue at heart here is that Crawford isn't really talking about "minis" when he says "minis".  What he's talking about is tactical combat.  Which I don't think anyone would deny is sort of a learned art.  Because that's really what 3E started, 4E demanded and 5E eliminated: tactical combat as an implicit element of gameplay.  Tactical gameplay is best visualized by people using minis and a grid, so naturally when people think of minis, what they're really thinking of is "tactical gameplay".


----------



## aramis erak

I've discovered that using abstract tokens instead of minis has several benefits...
1) tend to be cheaper
2) much more flexible
3) Players are more prone to ask, "What is it?" and "What can I see?" instead of assuming the mini is accurate

It is a pretty minor difference, but it does change things notably.


----------



## Gibili

Kobold Boots said:


> All I'll add here is that I don't blame a website with a strong community from publishing articles that have a "this or that" perspective as there's a lot to be said for driving conversation and ultimately traffic.
> I do think that there's a social responsibility to avoid certain types  of topics when it's clear that the threads on those fail to go well  repeatedly but you have to break some eggs to figure out what will and  won't fly.




 Yes totally agree.  There's promoting discussion and there's setting up a fight  
Sometimes I feel that these days, in order to attract an audience, discussions on the likes of news programmes do not invite contrary views in order to promote sensible debate, they do it in order to promote conflict, which is good for viewing numbers.  Click bait if you will. 

When I'm DMing, I never set up situations aimed at specific players knowing how they will react in order to get a rise out of them.  Nope, never.  Not me.
...did my nose just get longer?
Would I give my party an overpowered Rod of Lightning with a big, red, shiny button on it, knowing damn well that someone will eventually crack and use it?  Oh yes I would!  A big, red, shiny button! A Big, Red, Shiny Button!

Sorry, drifting way off topic here.


----------



## Gibili

tomBitonti said:


> I expect that miniatures (and tokens, and whatnot) to be used very frequently in the first sense, and much less often in the second.




Yes, I suspect that this is the case too.  In my experience players tend to be very creative and imaginative people and are more than happy to accept a beer top as an orc, or say a small Santa Claus candle as a fire giant.  I still have said candle too.  It is, and shall always be, a fire giant.
Beer tops have the advantage that a) you have to drink the beer, b) they come in many useful colours, c) with enough players they are also plentiful, although not at the start.  

Sometimes whipping up a quick physical layout of events saves a lot of time in setting out a scene, especially if you have something like a map or layout prepared, pre-printed or ready to be quickly drawn on paper or wipable sheet.  A picture, as they say, is worth a thousand words.  It also means you can save those words for being more descriptive about who or what the players are seeing.  So rather than spending 2 minutes talking about the juxtaposition of all the characters you can spend 2 minutes telling the players what they look like, what their mannerisms are, and thus give them more life and substance.

Two of our group are also keen wargamers but they prefer role playing to be about the story and the adventure and keep the heavy tactics to their wargaming exploits.


----------



## Gibili

Sunseeker said:


> I think the issue at heart here is that Crawford isn't really talking about "minis" when he says "minis".  What he's talking about is tactical combat.  Which I don't think anyone would deny is sort of a learned art.  Because that's really what 3E started, 4E demanded and 5E eliminated: tactical combat as an implicit element of gameplay.  Tactical gameplay is best visualized by people using minis and a grid, so naturally when people think of minis, what they're really thinking of is "tactical gameplay".




Very nicely put Sunseeker!  I agree.  In my mind this is really what this debate boils down to.   It's great that there are so many games and gaming systems out there so that there are genres and styles to suit everyone.  What with the interweb thingy, there is so much more access to that wonderful variety too.  If only we had more time to play!


----------



## Aaron L

Never used minis.  Every time we've tried them they've changed the game into a chess match instead of an RPG.  Hate them.


----------



## dragoner

Back in the 70's, the minis in the game store were a big attraction to playing D&D, not that I could afford many, I had a few though. I have seen some of the terrain and set of minis people have built up over the years, wonderful, glorious stuff. That said, D&D's success is because it's there to be sold, Hasbro has it's four P's in a row, a good marketing plan, for a product with strong name recognition; in the end I'd be leery to assign any measure of it's success in not needing minis.


----------



## Saplatt

We alternate between minis and TotM, depending on the situation, sometimes in the same 5E session. The biggest factor in the choice tends to be the scale and nature of the battlefield. If it happens outdoors or involves a lot of 3-dimensional movement, we tend to use TotM. If it's more of a standard dungeon crawl, then we're more likely to use the minis.

Another factor is the real environment. If someone can only attend via skype or if we are crammed for space, we're more likely to use TotM.

For whatever reason, 90% of the most memorable battles and events seem to have been TotM. That seems contrary to conventional wisdom re visual aids, but maybe internal visualization is more dramatic than a gameboard.


----------



## chibi graz'zt

One thing I particularly love about 5e, (ok, besides advantage/disadvantage) is that I can play it with mini's or theatre of the mind; I typically run both, I love big tactical climatic battles and smaller, theatre of the mind scenes. 
I love mini's, I paint mini's, I collect mini's and particularly big boss mini's; but not every game needs them.

In otherwise, I can have my cake and eat it too ;-)


----------



## Roni Shamay

roll20 has about 3 million users ans fantasy grounds also has a ton... miniature kickstarters like bones by reapermini's are already in the 5th round i think with each outselling the other... not to mention the pawns series (cardboad upright tokens) by paizo that are very popular as well.
you can play with minis or without, in 3.5 we play some with and some without same for 2e and ad&d and even 1e
4th ed was problematic bucase they turned dnd into a warcraft mmo type pnp game with many many problems that led to lack of immersion and SOD (suspension of disbelief).


----------



## Ratskinner

pemerton said:


> That's what I said!




Great minds, I guess.


----------



## Jonathan Daylett

When I go to play D&D 5e at the local game shop, almost everyone runs battles on a grid with minis or tokens. All the new players enjoy browsing through some of the more experienced players' collections and picking out something that represents their character. Most new players end up buying Wizkids minis from the shop after their first few games. The relatively low price-point of unpainted minis doesn't make it a barrier to entry, certainly not compared to all the source books and supplements. All this to say: no I definitely don't think removing the requirement for miniatures single-handedly made D&D as popular as it is now. Though it may have been a small factor, especially considering online play and actual play podcasts/streams. But everyone I know that plays D&D, at least in person, loves having miniatures represent characters and monsters.


----------



## Celticfrost

I can say I have played D&D since the late 70's and have never really used miniatures.


----------



## Tony Vargas

When 3e was the new D&D on the block, the grognards started screaming 'grid dependence!' - not because it meant anything, but because it sounded bad, and how could you deny it with diagrams of flanking & the like showing grids /right in the book/.  

It was a convenient attack, nothing more.  When 4e came out, h4ters, including 3.x fans who had been rallying against the absurdity of the same attack for years, took up the same meaningless war cry.  And, WotC, with 5e, pays lip service to it, not because it actually matters to anyone, but because it got repeated so much.  So 5e nominally 'defaults to TotM,' when, in fact, it has virtually no support for that mode of play, and goes ahead and states movement, range, and geometrically precise areas in feet.  


Was D&D originally a wargame?  That was meant to use minis?  Yes.  It said so right on the cover.


----------



## pemerton

Roni Shamay said:


> 4th ed was problematic bucase they turned dnd into a warcraft mmo type pnp game with many many problems that led to lack of immersion and SOD (suspension of disbelief).



This is not a universally held opinion.


----------



## Arilyn

pemerton said:


> This is not a universally held opinion.




I could never get into 4e, because it felt like a purely "combat" game with little personality. I love 13th Age, however, and have been hearing lots of differing opinions on 4e. Maybe should take another look.


----------



## billd91

Tony Vargas said:


> When 3e was the new D&D on the block, the grognards started screaming 'grid dependence!' - not because it meant anything, but because it sounded bad, and how could you deny it with diagrams of flanking & the like showing grids /right in the book/.
> 
> It was a convenient attack, nothing more.  When 4e came out, h4ters, including 3.x fans who had been rallying against the absurdity of the same attack for years, took up the same meaningless war cry.




Blah blah blah edition war gnar


----------



## Tony Vargas

billd91 said:


> Blah blah blah edition war gnar



 Uglúk u bagronk sha pushdug grid-dependence búbhosh skai!


----------



## pemerton

Arilyn said:


> I could never get into 4e, because it felt like a purely "combat" game with little personality. I love 13th Age, however, and have been hearing lots of differing opinions on 4e. Maybe should take another look.



There's no disputing that combat is a major focus of the 4e rules. If you think that combat is an _alternative_ to narrative development, rather than a possible site of narrative development, 4e may not work for you.

From my point of view, 4e is the only version of D&D that comes at all close to supporting free descriptor-style resolution (of the sort found in systems like HeroWars/Quest, Maelstrom Storytelling, and other indie or indie-type RPGs). This might seem an odd thing to say about a mini-&-grid combat system, but here are two links to actual play reports that illustrate what I've got in mind.

Part of what lets 4e support this is the same thing that underpins its status as the only version of D&D with systematic non-combat conflict resolution (of the sort found in all sorts of scene-based indie-type RPGs): a consistent and robust scheme of player-side resources and a mathematically reliable system for framing action difficulty.

The weakest part of 4e, in my experience, is bridging between combat and non-combat. The 4e players on these boards have talked a lot about ways of managing this. (This is  [MENTION=6696971]Manbearcat[/MENTION]'s schtick in particular.)


----------



## Dannyalcatraz

For all the things I disliked about 4Ed*, ultimately- _perversely_- I think it failed as a “war game” because too often, combat was *slooooow*.  I liked playing my character in and out of combat, but I think a DM favoring a more narrative campaign would have been a better fit.  (And the guy who ran our campaign was pretty narrative-focused for a traditional D&D game.)







* don’t misunderstand, folks, there were things I loved about it, too.


----------



## MichaelSomething

Arilyn said:


> I could never get into 4e, because it felt like a purely "combat" game with little personality. I love 13th Age, however, and have been hearing lots of differing opinions on 4e. Maybe should take another look.




What's the difference between having no role playing rules because you'll assume everyone will just freeform it versus having no roleplaying rules because you think it isn't important?


----------



## Staffan

Sunseeker said:


> I think people whine way too much about minis.  Literally_ anything_ can be a mini.  I've used pewter minis, I've used plastic minis, I've used LEGO minifigs, I've used dice, I've used pennies.  This isn't like World of Warcraft where you need to actually _create your character_ in order to play.  Also: Almost every D&Der I know _loves_ minis!  People complaining about a $5 mini being a barrier to entry to a game whose player-facing book is $50 and a standard set of dice is another $5-$15 is just silly.



The problem is that it's usually not *a* $5 mini. It's one per PC, plus all the crap you're fighting. For example, take the monsters from The Sunless Citadel (the first 3e adventure Wizards published), with the highest numbers you can fight at once:
[sblock]Twig Blight 10
Dire Rat 3
Oversized dire rat 1
Skeleton 5
Quasit 1
Kobold 15
Kobold sorcerer 1
Goblin 8
Goblin cleric 1
Hobgoblin 3
Hobgoblin chief 1
Troll 1
Water mephit 1
Cave rats 8
Gnome cleric 1
White wyrmling 1
Bugbear 1
Thoqqua 1
Shadow 1
Druid 1
Paladin 1
Wizard 1[/sblock]
That's about 70 monsters  - for one adventure. That's a lot of dough if you want to have minis for everything.


----------



## Lanefan

Staffan said:


> The problem is that it's usually not *a* $5 mini. It's one per PC



Which you get the players to provide, for the character(s) they play.



> plus all the crap you're fighting. For example, take the monsters from The Sunless Citadel (the first 3e adventure Wizards published), with the highest numbers you can fight at once:



Some cheap but perfectly functional alternatives for each of these:

Twig Blight 10 - any little bits of wood you can find e.g. saw a pencil into ten pieces
Dire Rat 3 - coloured glass beads
Oversized dire rat 1 - a bigger coloured glass bead, or just one of a different colour
Skeleton 5 - game pawns (10 or 12 for a buck at your local dollar store)
Quasit 1 - game pawn or something distinctive - a chess piece?
Kobold 15 - game pawns or anything else small - toy soldiers?
Kobold sorcerer 1 - whatever you used for the quasit if they're met at different times
Goblin 8 - game pawns again
Goblin cleric 1 - whatever you used for the quasit, above
Hobgoblin 3 - toy soldiers (20+ for a buck at your local dollar store)
Hobgoblin chief 1 - different-colour toy soldier, paint one if you have to
Troll 1 - a king or queen piece from a chess set
Water mephit 1 - whatever you used for the quasit, above
Cave rats 8 - glass beads
Gnome cleric 1 - whatever you used for the quasit, above
White wyrmling 1 - a plastic dinosaur (5 for a buck at the dollar store)
Bugbear 1 - a king or queen piece from a chess set
Thoqqua 1 - a piece of coloured chalk
Shadow 1 - a game pawn, or a piece of black fluff if you want to be creative
Druid 1 - a game pawn, or an actual mini if there's any extras e.g. from dead PCs
Paladin 1 - as per the druid above, or a painted toy soldier
Wizard 1 - as per the druid above



> That's about 70 monsters  - for one adventure. That's a lot of dough if you want to have minis for everything.



The point is, you can have "minis" for everything without having to buy actual costly minis for everything.  Other than maybe the three classed characters at the end of the list, even if you couldn't find any of these things (or reasonable substitutes) lying around the house the whole lot would cost at most 5 or 6 dollars; and you can easily re-use the same objects at different times to represent different monsters as shown above.

Lan-"though I've got lots of 'real' minis now, I still most often use the game pawns because finding the right minis for the monsters just takes too long"-efan


----------



## Kobold Boots

Arilyn said:


> I could never get into 4e, because it felt like a purely "combat" game with little personality. I love 13th Age, however, and have been hearing lots of differing opinions on 4e. Maybe should take another look.




I'll agree that the rules of any game, focus the players.  However, the biggest determiner of the personality of the game is the personality of the group playing it.  If I ran a combat only session then yes, it's a pure combat game.  If I ran a session where all characters were at court, then it took on the personalities of the players and their characters.

Generally, role-playing doesn't change when you staple combat rules on top of it.  But if you have a DM and players that obsess over the grid all the time, then sure, the game isn't an RPG in the best sense of the term.

Edit because I hit submit too quickly.  The best campaign I ever ran was done with 4e.  The reason it was the best was because the players were hardcore larpers at one point in time with at least two of them theatre majors.  By then I had also done a bunch of improvisation and public speaking work.  When it was time to turn the game into minis and monsters, everyone was ready for some good 'ole blowoff.

YMMV but I really appreciated 4e.  

KB


----------



## Kobold Boots

Staffan said:


> The problem is that it's usually not *a* $5 mini. It's one per PC, plus all the crap you're fighting. For example, take the monsters from The Sunless Citadel (the first 3e adventure Wizards published), with the highest numbers you can fight at once:
> [sblock]Twig Blight 10
> Dire Rat 3
> Oversized dire rat 1
> Skeleton 5
> Quasit 1
> Kobold 15
> Kobold sorcerer 1
> Goblin 8
> Goblin cleric 1
> Hobgoblin 3
> Hobgoblin chief 1
> Troll 1
> Water mephit 1
> Cave rats 8
> Gnome cleric 1
> White wyrmling 1
> Bugbear 1
> Thoqqua 1
> Shadow 1
> Druid 1
> Paladin 1
> Wizard 1[/sblock]
> That's about 70 monsters  - for one adventure. That's a lot of dough if you want to have minis for everything.




Solution

30mm miniature bases that will fit inside a 1" square - usually 5 bucks for 30 of them.
1" hole punch for sticker paper. - 10 bucks.
8.5" x 11 white sticker stock - shop around, usually 100 count for anywhere between 12.95 and 50 bucks depending on gloss
computer - you already have one. - sunk cost
gimp - free version of photoshop
find a tutorial online from one of the DM sites - free
search for images of your desired monsters - free

The above list would take about 3 hours of your time to set up the first time you did it.
70 monsters total cost 45 bucks.  Most of which you'd find the ability to reuse and reduce cost for your next module.  

Whether or not that's cost effective for your example.. YMMV

Be well
KB


----------



## JonnyP71

Polyhedral Columbia said:


> Back in the 80s, I was a DM for BECMI D&D. I never understood how miniatures would be useful, or even what the rules would be to use them. We occasionally put down some sort of jury-rigged tokens to mark marching order, and that was it. When I saw advertisements for miniatures, I thought they looked cool, and I even bought like two or three, but they were just nice little "D&D statues" to me. At the most, I just used it as a symbol of marching order. That's just the way we rolled.




That's precisely how we saw them, in fact that's all we assumed that they were for...

I dropped out of the hobby from about 1992-2012, when I came back I looked at a few videos on that new-fangled Youtube thingy and saw lots of people using grids and moving things around.  My initial thought was 'That's not D&D!!  What's happened to it????'

Still refuse to play/DM using a grid (grognard gnashing of teeth), but nowadays we do use an ungridded whiteboard and move minis around on it because my current (younger) group have the attention spans of Goldfish... we only use them for general positions though, nothing precise.  No counting of squares, no measuring 30', nothing like that.


----------



## aramis erak

Kobold Boots said:


> Solution
> 
> 30mm miniature bases that will fit inside a 1" square - usually 5 bucks for 30 of them.
> 1" hole punch for sticker paper. - 10 bucks.
> 8.5" x 11 white sticker stock - shop around, usually 100 count for anywhere between 12.95 and 50 bucks depending on gloss
> computer - you already have one. - sunk cost
> gimp - free version of photoshop
> find a tutorial online from one of the DM sites - free
> search for images of your desired monsters - free
> 
> The above list would take about 3 hours of your time to set up the first time you did it.
> 70 monsters total cost 45 bucks.  Most of which you'd find the ability to reuse and reduce cost for your next module.
> 
> Whether or not that's cost effective for your example.. YMMV
> 
> Be well
> KB




Sampler set of Meeples: $9.50 (21 colors); $65 for 10 of each color
Set of 10x 12mm cubes: $2.45 x3 (to allow for 3 kinds of monsters)
Shipping $5 -ish
Sharpie to number said cubes $3

Looks great on the table, and less work than stickering.
Plus, allows using 16mm hexes or 3/4" squaregrid, if you choose, for smaller table footprint.

Swap for minimeeples, 8mm cubes, and 1/2" grids for even smaller tablespaces.


----------



## aramis erak

JonnyP71 said:


> That's precisely how we saw them, in fact that's all we assumed that they were for...
> 
> I dropped out of the hobby from about 1992-2012, when I came back I looked at a few videos on that new-fangled Youtube thingy and saw lots of people using grids and moving things around.  My initial thought was 'That's not D&D!!  What's happened to it????'
> 
> Still refuse to play/DM using a grid (grognard gnashing of teeth), but nowadays we do use an ungridded whiteboard and move minis around on it because my current (younger) group have the attention spans of Goldfish... we only use them for general positions though, nothing precise.  No counting of squares, no measuring 30', nothing like that.




Photos of play at conventions in 1975-76, shown in photos in Strategic Review (the precursor to Dragon magazine) show minis on grids, and 3D terrain. Especially for the EPT variant of D&D. Early issues of Dragon, as well, show extensive use of minis and terrain.

My own conversations with Dave Arneson (via email) note that he did  use minis for combat "a good bit" but not all the time.


----------



## JonnyP71

I played here in the UK from about 1983 to 1992, and apart from a copy of White Dwarf once in a blue moon, never read the magazines.  Thus my gaming knowledge was limited to my own social circles though school and University - none of which used grids and minis.


----------



## Arilyn

Kobold Boots said:


> I'll agree that the rules of any game, focus the players.  However, the biggest determiner of the personality of the game is the personality of the group playing it.  If I ran a combat only session then yes, it's a pure combat game.  If I ran a session where all characters were at court, then it took on the personalities of the players and their characters.
> 
> Generally, role-playing doesn't change when you staple combat rules on top of it.  But if you have a DM and players that obsess over the grid all the time, then sure, the game isn't an RPG in the best sense of the term.
> 
> Edit because I hit submit too quickly.  The best campaign I ever ran was done with 4e.  The reason it was the best was because the players were hardcore larpers at one point in time with at least two of them theatre majors.  By then I had also done a bunch of improvisation and public speaking work.  When it was time to turn the game into minis and monsters, everyone was ready for some good 'ole blowoff.
> 
> YMMV but I really appreciated 4e.
> 
> KB




Usually, when I finish reading a new rpg, I get excited about making a character. This didn't happen with 4e, which was odd for me. Made a character anyway, and we ran a few adventures, but the usual roleplaying didn't happen. Couldn't get into it.

I would like to try again, because we may have sold the game short. It shares some similarities with 13th Age, after all. And people who have similar play styles to mine are seeing things in the game that I didn't. I still have my books, so I would like to give it another shot.


----------



## Jay Verkuilen

Dannyalcatraz said:


> For all the things I disliked about 4Ed*, ultimately- _perversely_- I think it failed as a “war game” because too often, combat was *slooooow*.  I liked playing my character in and out of combat, but I think a DM favoring a more narrative campaign would have been a better fit.  (And the guy who ran our campaign was pretty narrative-focused for a traditional D&D game.)




I didn't love 4E either, although there were aspects of it I think were pretty good. For instance, it's skill system is pretty decent and skill powers were a cool way to make skills really matter, sometimes in fairly surprising ways such as through Arcane Mutterings suddenly giving the wizard an ability to be much more persuasive than one would ordinarily suppose (having just substituted Arcana). 

But, 100%, yegads was it slow, especially past about level 12 or so. It also had a marked "dead spot" in the high teen levels for some characters. I forget who said that it had trouble with the handoff between combat and non-combat, but that was definitely true. The economy got nutty, as well. As a former DM of mine said "They simultaneously managed to make magic items necessary and boring." 

All that said, there were definitely some good aspects to 4E and a few things that got dropped from it in the transition to 5E I really wish they'd kept. One thing that I think 5E's skill system really would benefit from is a return to some of the good aspects of the skill challenge, which allows DCs to be kept lower by requiring multiple successes. IMO 5E also has too many different types of saving throws, which makes it hard to balance things. That's something 4E had done fairly well.


----------



## Jay Verkuilen

Arilyn said:


> I would like to try again, because we may have sold the game short. It shares some similarities with 13th Age, after all. And people who have similar play styles to mine are seeing things in the game that I didn't. I still have my books, so I would like to give it another shot.




I think you'd get most of the benefit of 4E from 13th Age.


----------



## Jay Verkuilen

Kobold Boots said:


> I'll agree that the rules of any game, focus the players.  However, the biggest determiner of the personality of the game is the personality of the group playing it.  If I ran a combat only session then yes, it's a pure combat game.  If I ran a session where all characters were at court, then it took on the personalities of the players and their characters.



I sort of agree, but I played a lot with the same players and 4E seemed to bring out the inner rules lawyers in all of us. By having defined nearly everything it seemed like it was necessary for them to play that way. Having switched to 5E, we don't tend to play that way and things feel more like they did back in the pre-4E days.


----------



## Arilyn

Jay Verkuilen said:


> I think you'd get most of the benefit of 4E from 13th Age.




Oh, for sure. 13th Age is our F20 game of choice, but it might be interesting to give 4e a whirl again, just to see. I've got maps and minis.


----------



## Kobold Boots

aramis erak said:


> Sampler set of Meeples: $9.50 (21 colors); $65 for 10 of each color
> Set of 10x 12mm cubes: $2.45 x3 (to allow for 3 kinds of monsters)
> Shipping $5 -ish
> Sharpie to number said cubes $3
> 
> Looks great on the table, and less work than stickering.
> Plus, allows using 16mm hexes or 3/4" squaregrid, if you choose, for smaller table footprint.
> 
> Swap for minimeeples, 8mm cubes, and 1/2" grids for even smaller tablespaces.




Good stuff.  I simply prefer to have custom chits specific to the type of monster hence my approach.  If I wasn't OCD like that, yours is far better.


----------



## Kobold Boots

Arilyn said:


> Usually, when I finish reading a new rpg, I get excited about making a character. This didn't happen with 4e, which was odd for me. Made a character anyway, and we ran a few adventures, but the usual roleplaying didn't happen. Couldn't get into it.
> 
> I would like to try again, because we may have sold the game short. It shares some similarities with 13th Age, after all. And people who have similar play styles to mine are seeing things in the game that I didn't. I still have my books, so I would like to give it another shot.




TBH, the first time I made a character for 4e (session 0 for my group) we had all just jumped in without pre-reading anything.  Left the experience with some serious apprehension because we all realized at different times how table oriented or video gam-ey it felt.  Half of the table mentioned at one point in time or another that if we didn't know each other well, we'd just go play a group based video game together every week for a few hours and get rid of the prep.  Now that the game is over, we're glad we didn't.

If you decide to try it again, I hope you enjoy it.  

Be well,
KB


----------



## Kobold Boots

Jay Verkuilen said:


> I sort of agree, but I played a lot with the same players and 4E seemed to bring out the inner rules lawyers in all of us. By having defined nearly everything it seemed like it was necessary for them to play that way. Having switched to 5E, we don't tend to play that way and things feel more like they did back in the pre-4E days.




I agree with your experience.  When everything is codified, people pay more attention to the code.  After a few sessions (we started with Keep on the Shadowfell) we had to institute table rule 0.1

Rule 0: DM as final arbiter
Rule 0.1 - The group agrees that the best storyline outcome will overrule the right rules decision if it's something that the group feels is detrimental to the experience.

I expect that everyone has something similar that relates to their preferred game style.  Very rarely do I see any long standing group run RAW.


----------



## Jay Verkuilen

Kobold Boots said:


> I agree with your experience.  When everything is codified, people pay more attention to the code.




It's a delicate balance to strike. I get why WotC tried to "DM Proof" things and I do support having robust systems as opposed to no systems at all, but 3.X and 4E often went way too far. 

I think I said this elsewhere but I do like the idea of the skill challenge as a way to make non-combat more interesting. Unfortunately what often happened in play was that Skill Challenges turned into a "OK time to go around the table" in a fashion that _felt_ very mechanical, which I think was one of the overall problems of lots of defined powers. I tended to find it more subtle not to tell the players that they were in a Skill Challenge and just occasionally call for rolls, keeping track of successes and failures. It kept things less mechanical and more oriented on the RP. 

In terms of combat I think 5E has mostly gotten it right, but I think some of the numbers in Skills and Saves are off---DCs are often too high---and I'd definitely like a bit more definition in terms of Skills, with more use of Y successes before X failures, which mimics the hit point mechanic. The save system would also benefit from having partial successes determined by having to make multiple saves. For instance, a spell that requires two saves, one to avoid damage and one to avoid a special effect, for instance, or two different types of damage. A good example might be _Prismatic Spray_, which as it stands is kind of underwhelming, whereas the 4E version was pretty cool because it attacked multiple defenses. That lets DCs and bonuses stay lower. 




> I expect that everyone has something similar that relates to their preferred game style.  Very rarely do I see any long standing group run RAW.




I tended to find that we played 4E pretty close to RAW with way fewer changes than had ever been the case in prior games. Part of that was played inclination but a lot was how intricate things were. It was hard to hack.


----------



## Kobold Boots

Jay Verkuilen said:


> It's a delicate balance to strike. I get why WotC tried to "DM Proof" things and I do support having robust systems as opposed to no systems at all, but 3.X and 4E often went way too far.




Sure.  I can see that.  I always just assumed that the designers were at one point DMs of long-standing games.  When I ran 1e for six months, it was pretty RAW.  When I ran it for 3 years, I had enough table rules that it got crunchy.  By that point 3x didn't seem that bad in comparison, but totally agree that I wouldn't want to introduce new players to the genre with a crunchy base rules set.



> I think I said this elsewhere but I do like the idea of the skill challenge as a way to make non-combat more interesting. Unfortunately what often happened in play was that Skill Challenges turned into a "OK time to go around the table" in a fashion that _felt_ very mechanical, which I think was one of the overall problems of lots of defined powers. I tended to find it more subtle not to tell the players that they were in a Skill Challenge and just occasionally call for rolls, keeping track of successes and failures. It kept things less mechanical and more oriented on the RP.




I dislike skill challenges for the reasons you've detailed.  If I could find a ToTM way to fairly adjucate them, I would.



> I tended to find that we played 4E pretty close to RAW with way fewer changes than had ever been the case in prior games. Part of that was played inclination but a lot was how intricate things were. It was hard to hack.




Agreed


----------



## Jay Verkuilen

Kobold Boots said:


> Sure.  I can see that.  I always just assumed that the designers were at one point DMs of long-standing games.  When I ran 1e for six months, it was pretty RAW.  When I ran it for 3 years, I had enough table rules that it got crunchy.  By that point 3x didn't seem that bad in comparison, but totally agree that I wouldn't want to introduce new players to the genre with a crunchy base rules set.



I currently stick close-ish to 5E RAW, but have definitely found spots I don't like. A lot of it depends on the group, though. Some groups are much more tolerant of alterations that others. Totally agree about introducing newbies with something as complicated as early 4E.  





> I dislike skill challenges for the reasons you've detailed.  If I could find a ToTM way to fairly adjucate them, I would.




Don't tell people they're in the middle of one helps a ton. Another is to adopt the basic idea, but make it obvious. This works better for, say, unlocking a chest. For example, clearly describe it as having two traps (requiring two rolls to remove, making one magical so Arcana, for instance) and three security measures. 

The Skill Challenge has the substantial benefit of using something like the hit point mechanic, which just fundamentally requires multiple stabs to succeed and is a way of measuring partial success.


----------



## Tony Vargas

MichaelSomething said:


> What's the difference between having no role playing rules because you'll assume everyone will just freeform it versus having no roleplaying rules because you think it isn't important?



I'm not sure what you even think a "role-playing rule" /is/, so that's hard to answer.  13A, 4e, & 5e all have rules that define the character concept & tie it back to the setting (backrounds & icon relationships; backgrounds & Themes/Paths/Destinies; and backgrounds & personality traits, respectively) and rules to resolve challenges out of combat (backgrounds, skill challenges, and attribute checks, respectively).  All three use alignment in some form.  

Ultimately, though, they are Role-Playing Games - everything you do in one of them /is/ roleplaying, and all their rules support that.  



Arilyn said:


> It shares some similarities with 13th Age, after all. And people who have similar play styles to mine are seeing things in the game that I didn't. I still have my books, so I would like to give it another shot.



 13A is actually a lot like 5e - no really, I can explain - not in design or implementation or even in presentation, but in that it hits many of the same goals, albeit from an entirely different angle.  13A combats are faster, not because options & monsters are paired down and set on easy mode, but because of the ingenious 'escalation die.'  13A evokes much of the 'feel' of the classic game, not by re-hashing its flaws but by lampshading & rationalizing the oddities those flaws led to that have become emblematic - the stand-out example, IMHO, is the conceit of the 'Living Dungeon,' but a more cogent one is the class designs, which harken to the problematic resource imbalances of classic D&D, but impose day-length arbitrarily (full heal-up after every 4th encounter, or campaign loss) to neatly solve them, where 5e just presents a guideline.  13A supports TotM, not by saying it defaults to it, but by having workable rules throughout that facilitate that style of play.  One could go on and on.  
But for not legally being able to put 'D&D' on the cover, 13A could be one of the best versions of that game, ever (OK, it's rather like PF, in a way, too).  

Conversely, 13A bears strong superficial mechanical resemblances to 4e - recoveries & rallies are rather like surges & second wind, it uses 4e's attacker-rolls-vs-defense scheme instead of AC & saving throws, monsters/NPCs are mechanically different from PCs, etc - but it doesn't retain as much 3.x-style customizability as 4e did, nor does it prioritize balance in the same way.  FWIW.  

But, to get back to the table-flip topic, 4e, 13A & 5e can all be run without minis.  13A, as already alluded to, has solid rules built in from the ground up that work smoothly with that mode of play.  Ranges & areas (and, critically, who's caught in them), movement & melee can be run in an abstract, easy-to-track way, or they can be placed on a grid for ease of handling greater precision.  4e states everything in 'squares' and areas are neatly abstracted to squares (or cubes) as well - intentionally or not, that lends itself to much easier tracking of movement/positioning and who gets caught in what AE, even when you're /not/ using a grid.  5e, OTOH, approaches everything in terms of concrete feet:  you move a certain number of feet, your range is so many tens of feet, areas are handled with a variety of precise geometric shapes to the foot.  It's easy enough to divide by 5 (or even 10, almost everything is in increments of 10), create some 3.x-style templates, and run that on a grid, but it doesn't lend itself well to "TotM" unless you just toss it and ballpark everything under the rubric of DM's judgement (which, honestly, is exactly what you're expected to do - and for a lot more, besides).

I think D&Ds success, this long-anticipated come-back finally materializing, is largely because it's threaded the needle between being accessible (not intimidating, say, before you even try it) to new players, but acceptable to the old guard wining their endorsement (or at least, placating them enough that they refrain from actively campaigning against it).  It's the same conundrum as faced comics franchises and any other properties with a very nerdy, committed fanbase when trying mainstream.  If you just go forward with the status quo, you have something that's intimidating to the masses, and even if they try it, only a few will stick with it.  If you change it enough to be more appealing to the vanilla set (once they try it), the existing fans will pan it, and fewer people will even try it ("wow, if the people who loved this hate it, it must not be worth even a look").  That's double true of a come-back property that was a huge fad in decades past:  if you're going to try it, don't you want to 'see what all the fuss was about' with an 'authentic' version, rather than a modernized 'better' version that the few existing fans openly hate?  
3.5 with 'back to the dungeon' & lavish rewards for system mastery appealed to the hard-core hobbyist, but was intimidating as heck to the potential new fan, while 4e was easy to learn/play/run for new/casual players (and didn't give system-masters too overwhelming an advantage), but utterly repugnant to the hard-core.  

5e navigated between that Charybdis & Scylla - and it's success in doing so had nothing to do with nominally defaulting to TotM.


----------



## Manbearcat

pemerton said:


> There's no disputing that combat is a major focus of the 4e rules. If you think that combat is an _alternative_ to narrative development, rather than a possible site of narrative development, 4e may not work for you.
> 
> From my point of view, 4e is the only version of D&D that comes at all close to supporting free descriptor-style resolution (of the sort found in systems like HeroWars/Quest, Maelstrom Storytelling, and other indie or indie-type RPGs). This might seem an odd thing to say about a mini-&-grid combat system, but here are two links to actual play reports that illustrate what I've got in mind.
> 
> Part of what lets 4e support this is the same thing that underpins its status as the only version of D&D with systematic non-combat conflict resolution (of the sort found in all sorts of scene-based indie-type RPGs): a consistent and robust scheme of player-side resources and a mathematically reliable system for framing action difficulty.
> 
> The weakest part of 4e, in my experience, is bridging between combat and non-combat. The 4e players on these boards have talked a lot about ways of managing this. (This is  [MENTION=6696971]Manbearcat[/MENTION]'s schtick in particular.)




I think the Skill Challenge is a microcosm of a lot of 4e's problems with the D&D player-base.  We've seen it for years and years in the past and you see it again in this thread; people decrying the SC mechanic as an arbitrary practice in (mostly) fiction-irrelevant dicing.  Which is not what it is.  At all (which we've covered a jillion times over).

I wonder if in DMG 1's initial explanation of SCs if they would have just pointed to indie, scene-based predecessors (say Dogs in the Vineyard or Fate), how much more success there would have been in staving off the "Skill Challenges are just stale dice rolling."  Just 9 months later, DMG2 did a fantastic job of better relaying the fundamental principles of closed scene resolution for non-combat challenges/conflicts.  Then the RC in '11 or '12 put it all together succinctly (yet still didn't mention any indie games).  

Now, anyone who has played/run modern indie scene-based games like Cortex+ (any of them) or Blades in the Dark (competing Clocks), will understand precisely what a 4e Skill Challenge is architecturally (dramatic arm, pacing, locked-in resolution by way of system machinery) and they'll understand the principles/techniques that guide its resolution (eg "Establish Goal/Stakes", "Fiction First", "Task and Intent", "Change the Situation", "Fail Forward").

But folks smuggling in 3.x or AD&D serial exploration expectations into 4e's scene resolution mechanics are invariably going to be very  ,   , and perhaps  



As an aside, I still don't understand the video game stuff.  4e's combat machinery is quite clearly inspired much more by Magic the Gathering (each Role as a Magic deck archetypes; eg Control, Aggro, Mid-Range)...which is, of course, WotC...so it seems the intuitive extrapolation.

I'm sure they were thinking something like "wow, if we could get the massive amount of Magic players (which dwarfs D&D players), D&D players, some modern video game players (sure WoW but especially God of War and the Diablo player-base as the "World on Fire" PoL mythology/setting is a match), and entice the indie RPG community (due to its tightness of design, narrativism, and scene-based paradigm)...holy cow that would be THE BIGGEST THING EVER."

But that didn't work out because there is less overlap than they thought when it came to a lot of D&D players and those other games (or at least a large segment of D&D players that want their D&D gated from those other influences).


----------



## pemerton

[MENTION=6696971]Manbearcat[/MENTION], another curious thing about responses to 4e is this idea of "DM-proofing". There's a very strong ethos, I think, among D&D players that the GM's job includes deciding outcomes. Which also underpins at least some of the discussion about TotM vs minis/grids.


----------



## Imaro

Manbearcat said:


> I think the Skill Challenge is a microcosm of a lot of 4e's problems with the D&D player-base.  We've seen it for years and years in the past and you see it again in this thread; people decrying the SC mechanic as an arbitrary practice in (mostly) fiction-irrelevant dicing.  Which is not what it is.  At all (which we've covered a jillion times over).
> 
> I wonder if in DMG 1's initial explanation of SCs if they would have just pointed to indie, scene-based predecessors (say Dogs in the Vineyard or Fate), how much more success there would have been in staving off the "Skill Challenges are just stale dice rolling."  Just 9 months later, DMG2 did a fantastic job of better relaying the fundamental principles of closed scene resolution for non-combat challenges/conflicts.  Then the RC in '11 or '12 put it all together succinctly (yet still didn't mention any indie games).
> 
> Now, anyone who has played/run modern indie scene-based games like Cortex+ (any of them) or Blades in the Dark (competing Clocks), will understand precisely what a 4e Skill Challenge is architecturally (dramatic arm, pacing, locked-in resolution by way of system machinery) and they'll understand the principles/techniques that guide its resolution (eg "Establish Goal/Stakes", "Fiction First", "Task and Intent", "Change the Situation", "Fail Forward").
> 
> But folks smuggling in 3.x or AD&D serial exploration expectations into 4e's scene resolution mechanics are invariably going to be very  ,   , and perhaps




Of course if it's the level of abstraction that is the issue with SC's for a few/some/many... a better explanation wouldn't have really helped.  Some people just want finer granularity and tighter action association in their task resolution and mechanics.  The other issue I saw was that 4e tried to have it's cake and eat it too in this respect which may have caused some dissonance with the mechanics (the same way some people just don't like there being a minion version of a monster and a regular version)... on the one hand we have very granular and hardcoded DC's for things like picking a lock... but on the other hand you could pick that same lock in a SC and the DC could be different.  This type of design speaks to a specific sort of playstyle and I'm not sure it was what the majority of D&D players wanted.  All IMO of course.      



Manbearcat said:


> As an aside, I still don't understand the video game stuff.  4e's combat machinery is quite clearly inspired much more by Magic the Gathering (each Role as a Magic deck archetypes; eg Control, Aggro, Mid-Range)...which is, of course, WotC...so it seems the intuitive extrapolation.
> 
> I'm sure they were thinking something like "wow, if we could get the massive amount of Magic players (which dwarfs D&D players), D&D players, some modern video game players (sure WoW but especially God of War and the Diablo player-base as the "World on Fire" PoL mythology/setting is a match), and entice the indie RPG community (due to its tightness of design, narrativism, and scene-based paradigm)...holy cow that would be THE BIGGEST THING EVER."
> 
> But that didn't work out because there is less overlap than they thought when it came to a lot of D&D players and those other games (or at least a large segment of D&D players that want their D&D gated from those other influences).




Eh, I'm not so sure I agree seeing as how their most recent console videogame... Neverwinter... actually uses the 4e mechanics and plays like a pretty traditional MMOrpg.  It's been a while since I've played but if I recall correctly... Basically they've converted the at-will/encounter/daily divide into tiered cool down times for your various 4e powers in the videogame... This is exactly what I think most people are relating them too when they make the videogame comparison...the standard structure implemented for every class, categorization of power levels, and standard recharge times of 4e powers while not an exact 1 for 1 copy, it's not a stretch to see why they reminding many people of modern/prevalent mmorpg mechanics.


----------



## The Crimson Binome

Manbearcat said:


> I wonder if in DMG 1's initial explanation of SCs if they would have just pointed to indie, scene-based predecessors (say Dogs in the Vineyard or Fate), how much more success there would have been in staving off the "Skill Challenges are just stale dice rolling."  Just 9 months later, DMG2 did a fantastic job of better relaying the fundamental principles of closed scene resolution for non-combat challenges/conflicts.  Then the RC in '11 or '12 put it all together succinctly (yet still didn't mention any indie games).



Those types of independent games remain highly controversial among traditional role-players. Mentioning them, whether indirectly or by name, would not have helped to sell the edition.


----------



## Flexor the Mighty!

Saelorn said:


> Those types of independent games remain highly controversial among traditional role-players. Mentioning them, whether indirectly or by name, would not have helped to sell the edition.




And I'd bet the large majority of players would have no idea who they were talking about anyway.


----------



## The Crimson Binome

Flexor the Mighty! said:


> And I'd bet the large majority of players would have no idea who they were talking about anyway.



Also true. It seems like one of the hardest parts of game design is that you can't just sit down and explain your whole design process.


----------



## Lanefan

JonnyP71 said:


> I played here in the UK from about 1983 to 1992, and apart from a copy of White Dwarf once in a blue moon, never read the magazines.  Thus my gaming knowledge was limited to my own social circles though school and University - none of which used grids and minis.



These things really do vary by area.

Around here, pretty much all the games we knew of back in the day (the '80s for me, earlier than that for some others) used minis, tokens, or some variant thereof.  The bigger variable was what was used underneath for a grid-and-map surface...some used paper, some used washable markers either on a whiteboard or (in one case) directly onto the arborite-surfaced table, and some used - and in my case still use to this day - a chalkboard.


----------



## Lanefan

Manbearcat said:


> But folks smuggling in 3.x or AD&D serial exploration expectations into 4e's scene resolution mechanics are invariably going to be very  ,   , and perhaps



which might be a significant part of why 4e never held any appeal for me.  I want the exploration.  I want the mapping.  I want the what's-around-the-next-corner sort of vibe.



> As an aside, I still don't understand the video game stuff.  4e's combat machinery is quite clearly inspired much more by Magic the Gathering (each Role as a Magic deck archetypes; eg Control, Aggro, Mid-Range)...which is, of course, WotC...so it seems the intuitive extrapolation.
> 
> I'm sure they were thinking something like "wow, if we could get the massive amount of Magic players (which dwarfs D&D players), D&D players, some modern video game players (sure WoW but especially God of War and the Diablo player-base as the "World on Fire" PoL mythology/setting is a match), and entice the indie RPG community (due to its tightness of design, narrativism, and scene-based paradigm)...holy cow that would be THE BIGGEST THING EVER."
> 
> But that didn't work out because there is less overlap than they thought when it came to a lot of D&D players and those other games (or at least a large segment of D&D players that want their D&D gated from those other influences).



And any MtG players they were going to get would have come over with 3e, not 4e.

Through the '90s WotC found massive success with a game - MtG - that as part of its design had to have a rule for absolutely everything.  By 2000 the rules and rulings for that game were as big and as dense as a dictionary of the English language - I know this as I was doing (badly in) some MtG tournaments around then and had to keep up with this stuff.

And so when they designed 3e D&D there was an obvious move towards also having a rule for everything - hell, it worked in Magic, why not here? - and that was their play to attract MtG players.  This may or may not have been a factor in 3e's out-of-the-gate sales success, I don't know.  But to those of us used to 1e-era stuff, the MtG design influence on 3e in ths regard couldn't be missed.



			
				pemerton said:
			
		

> @Manbearcat, another curious thing about responses to 4e is this idea of "DM-proofing". There's a very strong ethos, I think, among D&D players that the GM's job includes deciding outcomes.



There's also a strong ethos that says the DM's job includes tweaking or kitbashing the rules system to suit her own game/self/players; and 4e (and 3e for all that) was not a very kitbash-friendly system - too many knock-on effects where changing something here broke things there, there, and probably there as well.

And this was intentional on the part of the designers, as their definition of DM-proofing included kitbash-proofing.  Compare this with 5e, where the specific design intention is to make it modular and thus kitbash-friendly.


> Which also underpins at least some of the discussion about TotM vs minis/grids.



I don't see the connection - please elaborate.

Lanefan


----------



## aramis erak

Imaro said:


> Of course if it's the level of abstraction that is the issue with SC's for a few/some/many... a better explanation wouldn't have really helped.  Some people just want finer granularity and tighter action association in their task resolution and mechanics.  The other issue I saw was that 4e tried to have it's cake and eat it too in this respect which may have caused some dissonance with the mechanics (the same way some people just don't like there being a minion version of a monster and a regular version)... on the one hand we have very granular and hardcoded DC's for things like picking a lock... but on the other hand you could pick that same lock in a SC and the DC could be different.  This type of design speaks to a specific sort of playstyle and I'm not sure it was what the majority of D&D players wanted.  All IMO of course.
> 
> 
> 
> Eh, I'm not so sure I agree seeing as how their most recent console videogame... Neverwinter... actually uses the 4e mechanics and plays like a pretty traditional MMOrpg.  It's been a while since I've played but if I recall correctly... Basically they've converted the at-will/encounter/daily divide into tiered cool down times for your various 4e powers in the videogame... This is exactly what I think most people are relating them too when they make the videogame comparison...the standard structure implemented for every class, categorization of power levels, and standard recharge times of 4e powers while not an exact 1 for 1 copy, it's not a stretch to see why they reminding many people of modern/prevalent mmorpg mechanics.




The character scale boardgames used a light version of 4E mechanics as well, in a coop mode.


----------



## aramis erak

Lanefan said:


> There's also a strong ethos that says the DM's job includes tweaking or kitbashing the rules system to suit her own game/self/players; and 4e (and 3e for all that) was not a very kitbash-friendly system - too many knock-on effects where changing something here broke things there, there, and probably there as well.
> 
> 
> Lanefan




There was a large portion of D&D players who rejected tweaking and kitbashing. A largish subculture, not so fondly called "rules lawyers" in polite conversation and multiple expletives outside that. 

And another pair of subcultures, who also often rejected tweaking and kitbashing were the Lore fanboys for both Greyhawk and (best left) Forgotten Realms. For them, the "approved changes" are reflective of the reality of the setting, and even in the early 80's, they were slavishly demanding adherence to setting... and later bemoaning that AD&D needed sourcebooks for both with mechanical changes. (For some reason, perhaps the radical class changes, perhaps fewer of them playing, DL fans tended to be a bit less apparent where I was.)

And I recall a flame war on one of the local BBS's in the late 80's over  Elves of Alfheim... and how it "ruined Basic D&D's balance"...

not everyone bought into "rule 0" even back in the day. Many of us never have.


----------



## pemerton

Lanefan said:


> 4e (and 3e for all that) was not a very kitbash-friendly system - too many knock-on effects where changing something here broke things there, there, and probably there as well.
> 
> And this was intentional on the part of the designers, as their definition of DM-proofing included kitbash-proofing.  Compare this with 5e, where the specific design intention is to make it modular and thus kitbash-friendly.



How is 3E not "kitbash-friendly"? It's spawned everything from PF to Mutants and Masterminds to d20 Cthulhu to 13th Age, etc.

And I don't buy that 4e is not "kitbash-friendly" either. This idea of knock-on effects is overrated. (What examples do you have in mind?)

Given all the variations that I've seen posted by 4e players on these boards, I think it can be "kitbashed" just fine!


----------



## pemerton

pemerton said:


> There's a very strong ethos, I think, among D&D players that the GM's job includes deciding outcomes. Which also underpins at least some of the discussion about TotM vs minis/grids.





Lanefan said:


> I don't see the connection - please elaborate.



When the system uses concrete numbers for range, separation, movement rates, etc, and when the actual rules decisions that take these as inputs are made by the GM based on his/her conception of the ingame situation (which is what TotM tends to mean in 5e), then the GM is exercising a degree of influence of outcomes.

In AD&D the movement rates relative to the distances, together with the engagement rules, tend to reduce the impact of this - where is does manifest more is in relation to the duration of magical effects once the action is not taking place in a dungeon adjudicated via tight timekeeping rules.

In 5e the durations have mostly been cleaned up, but the distance issues are more significant because it has 3E/4e-style engagement rules, movement rates etc which increase the significance of small variations.


----------



## Flexor the Mighty!

Imaro said:


> Of course if it's the level of abstraction that is the issue with SC's for a few/some/many... a better explanation wouldn't have really helped.  Some people just want finer granularity and tighter action association in their task resolution and mechanics.  The other issue I saw was that 4e tried to have it's cake and eat it too in this respect which may have caused some dissonance with the mechanics (the same way some people just don't like there being a minion version of a monster and a regular version)... on the one hand we have very granular and hardcoded DC's for things like picking a lock... but on the other hand you could pick that same lock in a SC and the DC could be different.  This type of design speaks to a specific sort of playstyle and I'm not sure it was what the majority of D&D players wanted.  All IMO of course.
> 
> 
> 
> Eh, I'm not so sure I agree seeing as how their most recent console videogame... Neverwinter... actually uses the 4e mechanics and plays like a pretty traditional MMOrpg.  It's been a while since I've played but if I recall correctly... Basically they've converted the at-will/encounter/daily divide into tiered cool down times for your various 4e powers in the videogame... This is exactly what I think most people are relating them too when they make the videogame comparison...the standard structure implemented for every class, categorization of power levels, and standard recharge times of 4e powers while not an exact 1 for 1 copy, it's not a stretch to see why they reminding many people of modern/prevalent mmorpg mechanics.




Yeah, I thought the language, class roles, and some other things were very MMO based.  This class is the tank, this is the controller, this is the striker, etc.


----------



## Jay Verkuilen

Manbearcat said:


> I think the Skill Challenge is a microcosm of a lot of 4e's problems with the D&D player-base.  We've seen it for years and years in the past and you see it again in this thread; people decrying the SC mechanic as an arbitrary practice in (mostly) fiction-irrelevant dicing.  Which is not what it is.  At all (which we've covered a jillion times over). <snip>
> 
> But folks smuggling in 3.x or AD&D serial exploration expectations into 4e's scene resolution mechanics are invariably going to be very  ,   , and perhaps




What I think tended to happen in my experience was that Skill Challenges ended up becoming an exercise in dicing. I don't think that's what the designers' intent was. I'm fairly certain that it was supposed to be an introduction of the kind of modern structured interaction to D&D. I doubt they intended the way a lot of tables ended up using SCs. There were some aspects that made it turn into that, at least where I was. One was the requirement that everybody participate. This often meant that the SC as written would have some weird skills attached just to allow the barbarian's player something to do in a social situation. Our joke for that was "he does pushups to impress the king". 

I played a lot of 4E with some people who had some rules lawyer-ish tendencies. Not horrible, but some, and so 4E's propensity to bring out the rules lawyer in everyone really brought it out in SCs. 




> As an aside, I still don't understand the video game stuff.  4e's combat machinery is quite clearly inspired much more by Magic the Gathering (each Role as a Magic deck archetypes; eg Control, Aggro, Mid-Range)...which is, of course, WotC...so it seems the intuitive extrapolation.
> 
> I'm sure they were thinking something like "wow, if we could get the massive amount of Magic players (which dwarfs D&D players), D&D players, some modern video game players (sure WoW but especially God of War and the Diablo player-base as the "World on Fire" PoL mythology/setting is a match), and entice the indie RPG community (due to its tightness of design, narrativism, and scene-based paradigm)...holy cow that would be THE BIGGEST THING EVER."




4E's combat system was clearly inspired by several sources: MtG, action and action RPG video games with powers that had cooldown, miniature games, and some other RPGs such as White Wolf's _Exalted_. The late 3.5 releases shows that they were playing with some of these ideas, most notably in the IMO excellent _Book of Nine Swords_. Some of the ideas they were playing with, such as At Will powers, were clearly there to deal with the problem that Vancian casting induces among casters. 

IMO the big problem with 4E's design wasn't that they used that idea, it's that they made _every_ class use it, especially in the early days of 4E. The fighter and rogue both became "spellcasters" of a sort. A lot of players I recall were really undone by that change. They wanted to swing swords, not figure out when to use which power. Essentials restored a fighter that was more of a classic fighter in the form of the slayer, but by then it was pretty clear that 4E was on its way down. Ironically, the 4E fighter and rogue actually did feel a good bit like the classic fighter or rogue in play, but it didn't involve making basic attacks.  

I'm not saying this is the only reason why 4E was a _relative_ failure. Their excessive production schedule was an issue, massive change of the game world, pushing into "weird" concepts that I think appealed at best to a very small niche (e.g., the shardmind), magic items were incredibly boring and mundane, and still others.


----------



## Jay Verkuilen

Flexor the Mighty! said:


> Yeah, I thought the language, class roles, and some other things were very MMO based.  This class is the tank, this is the controller, this is the striker, etc.




Of course, MMOs drew heavily on D&D as an inspiration, so there was a certain amount of "teacher learning from the student" there.


----------



## Jay Verkuilen

Lanefan said:


> There's also a strong ethos that says the DM's job includes tweaking or kitbashing the rules system to suit her own game/self/players; and 4e (and 3e for all that) was not a very kitbash-friendly system - too many knock-on effects where changing something here broke things there, there, and probably there as well. And this was intentional on the part of the designers, as their definition of DM-proofing included kitbash-proofing.  Compare this with 5e, where the specific design intention is to make it modular and thus kitbash-friendly.




3.X had _Unearthed Arcana_ published as a set of potential house rules along with the tons of third party content and games based on the D20 ruleset, so I'm not sure I'd agree with the assertion about 3.X. 4E to me felt much less easily alterable, with many more pretty clear dependencies among its parts. There seemed to be much less other people publishing with 4E, although that may be more to the way WotC handled the license.


----------



## billd91

Jay Verkuilen said:


> 3.X had _Unearthed Arcana_ published as a set of potential house rules along with the tons of third party content and games based on the D20 ruleset, so I'm not sure I'd agree with the assertion about 3.X. 4E to me felt much less easily alterable, with many more pretty clear dependencies among its parts. There seemed to be much less other people publishing with 4E, although that may be more to the way WotC handled the license.




Lanefan's criticism of the difficulty of modifying 3e because of too much interconnectivity was very common from some AD&D fans shortly after 3e debuted. Then, once more people got a feel for 3e, the argument continued on but against 4e. But I'm not sure the criticism is entirely misplaced. 3e and 4e are part of a trend in integrated game mechanic design considerably more advanced than earlier iterations of D&D and AD&D. Those editions are less piecemeal in their approach. It is easier to isolate certain aspects of the game in 1e/2e.

In some ways, that integrated design was a benefit because many game mechanics worked together better, a hindrance in others because the tolerance of play styles and some other factors narrowed. For example, it was relatively easy to have mixed level game groups in 1e, much harder in 3e and 4e because tolerance for mixed level parties had narrowed as damage output and ACs of monsters were more closely related to the expected level of the party members.


----------



## Kobold Boots

Jay Verkuilen said:


> 3.X had _Unearthed Arcana_ published as a set of potential house rules along with the tons of third party content and games based on the D20 ruleset, so I'm not sure I'd agree with the assertion about 3.X. 4E to me felt much less easily alterable, with many more pretty clear dependencies among its parts. There seemed to be much less other people publishing with 4E, although that may be more to the way WotC handled the license.




I avoided kit bashing 4e because the system looked well-balanced and I didn't want to screw around with that.  Reason is not because I dislike kit bashing.  It was because by the time I moved to 4E, 3.5 was a brutal hodge-podge of nonsense advanced by the deep D20 3rd party system and the lack of a PHB+1 rule.  I was ecstatic to not have to kit bash to achieve balance.


----------



## Jay Verkuilen

billd91 said:


> Lanefan's criticism of the difficulty of modifying 3e because of too much interconnectivity was very common from some AD&D fans shortly after 3e debuted.




Oh sure, definitely.... 



> Then, once more people got a feel for 3e, the argument continued on but against 4e.




Yeah that's a classic loop of people offended by new developments all over the place, not just in games.  Think about what old fans often say about bands that change their sound, to say nothing of politics. 




> But I'm not sure the criticism is entirely misplaced. 3e and 4e are part of a trend in integrated game mechanic design considerably more advanced than earlier iterations of D&D and AD&D. Those editions are less piecemeal in their approach. It is easier to isolate certain aspects of the game in 1e/2e.




Certainly it's harder to mess with things when the rule system is much more integrated. 



> In some ways, that integrated design was a benefit because many game mechanics worked together better, a hindrance in others because the tolerance of play styles and some other factors narrowed. For example, it was relatively easy to have mixed level game groups in 1e, much harder in 3e and 4e because tolerance for mixed level parties had narrowed as damage output and ACs of monsters were more closely related to the expected level of the party members.




Yeah, that's a very good point. In a tightly integrated ruleset it's much harder to go outside the designers' vision. I found 3.X much more alterable than 4E. In 3.X I had pretty good intuition for the numbers, though not as good as 2E. In 4E, I got the numbers fairly well but because everything was a power and all characters were complicated power choices essentially it was hard to alter things. 4E was relentless about requiring synergies among the players. 

A friend of mine really loved DMing 4E but I generally hated it, though I often enjoyed playing it (with some exceptions). He's way more of a rule follower than I am, whereas I tend to improvise and go by the seat of my pants more. Because I had a good feel for the numbers in 3.X I didn't bother to work every detail out in advance but mostly relied on heuristics that kept things going and had fights stay fairly balanced. 4E was very good if you liked following rules but I was the kid who spent 1st grade in the corner and didn't color in the lines and I still mostly cook by taste.


----------



## Jay Verkuilen

Kobold Boots said:


> I avoided kit bashing 4e because the system looked well-balanced and I didn't want to screw around with that.  Reason is not because I dislike kit bashing.  It was because by the time I moved to 4E, 3.5 was a brutal hodge-podge of nonsense advanced by the deep D20 3rd party system and the lack of a PHB+1 rule.  I was ecstatic to not have to kit bash to achieve balance.




The problem I had with 4E was that it was so intricately set up that it was hard to depart from the vision of the designers. While I agree that near the end of 3.X there really was a hodgepodge of too many options (thanks to the OGL and resulting glut of D20 products) I did feel it was possible to make use of 3.X to achieve something like what _I_ wanted to achieve---my 3.5 campaign was pretty heavily _Unearthed Arcana_-ed. 

With 4E I felt very constrained to play things the way the designers wanted me to. The fact that 4E also seemed to encourage rules-lawyering meant it really ended up taking a lot of what I liked as a DM away from me. Of course, by "DM proofing" they were trying to help newer DMs, and I get that, but man I really felt like I was stuck doing things the way the guys in Seattle wanted me to do it. I still feel some of that in 5E but it's much more modular and easier to mess with. I haven't gone through and fixed a lot of the numbers I think they messed up (such as in saves and skills), were I to start a campaign myself in earnest, i would first.


----------



## Tony Vargas

pemerton said:


> How is 3E not "kitbash-friendly"?
> And I don't buy that 4e is not "kitbash-friendly" either. This idea of knock-on effects is overrated. (What examples do you have in mind?)



 It wasn't just that the sheer volume of material made tweaking any one thing a fraught exercise, both in terms of blowing up the game with an unforeseen broken combo, and in terms of blowing up a player's precious 'build,' but that the 3.x community had a RAW uber alles zeitgeist going that was utterly intolerant of variants or house rules, of any kind - it would just tolerate the banhammer, a sub-set of 3.5 - core-only or E6 - was acceptable, if looked down upon.

Similarly, 4e had a lot of material out so a lot of wires to choose from when deciding which one to cut without blowing it up, and while it was less prone to broken combos, it was pretty neatly balanced as it was so it can't have seemed like there was a lot to be gained in tinkering.  Plus, re-designing a game is essentially what we're talking about, and 4e was a game (well, a D&D) designed to a comparatively high standard, it was intimidating to attempt amateur design work at that same level.  

Oh, and 3e & 4e were both open to re-skinning, so if you did have a player who really wanted some off-the-wall bit of gear in 3e or off-the-wall power concept in 4e, he could probably just take something off the shelf and describe it differently, when, back in the day, you'd've likely had to've created a new rule for whatever it was.



> It's spawned everything from PF to Mutants and Masterminds to d20 Cthulhu to 13th Age, etc.



 That's d20, not 3e.


----------



## Jay Verkuilen

Tony Vargas said:


> It wasn't just that the sheer volume of material made tweaking any one thing a fraught exercise, both in terms of blowing up the game with an unforeseen broken combo, and in terms of blowing up a player's precious 'build,' but that the 3.x community had a RAW uber alles zeitgeist going that was utterly intolerant of variants or house rules, of any kind - it would just tolerate the banhammer, a sub-set of 3.5 - core-only or E6 - was acceptable, if looked down upon.



I never really encountered that particular attitude in 3.X myself, although that might have been more just who I knew, but boy was that the norm in 4E.



> Similarly, 4e had a lot of material out so a lot of wires to choose from when deciding which one to cut without blowing it up, and while it was less prone to broken combos, it was pretty neatly balanced as it was so it can't have seemed like there was a lot to be gained in tinkering.  Plus, re-designing a game is essentially what we're talking about, and 4e was a game (well, a D&D) designed to a comparatively high standard, it was intimidating to attempt amateur design work at that same level.




My reason for tinkering is rarely for balance reasons, although there's some of that of course. Often it's because the RAW do one thing and I want to do something else. With 4E, it was really set up to emphasize a certain synergy type play with a group of 5 PCs that covered the assigned roles and a general assumption that the _players_ were really engaged and very system-knowledgeable. If you had 7 PCs, it often super laggy just due to the burden and various off-turn actions. God help you if there was a bard or either an avenger or barbarian in the party, with lots of ability to either act off-turn or to turn minor actions into attacks. 

If you had fewer PCs or wanted to, say, run a rogues-only game, it was much more difficult to do. In my 3.5 game, I had some races being all gestalt characters (essentially two classes at once) with others having Eberron style action points. It worked surprisingly well though on paper it would have been totally broken. It turned out the action economy and MAD kept things in check. 4E was just such an intricate set of dependencies and synergies that I never felt confident enough to do that. Truth be told, I didn't really love it enough to want to either, especially given how rules-lawyer-y it seemed to make players. I was initially skeptical of 5E but was converted very quickly. 

You're right, thought, 4E was pretty well designed and I do think the designers had some very good ideas. I wish some of those had been more directly carried forward into 5E. For example, having healing activate hit dice is a good thing. I also wish they'd have kept fewer saving throws or defenses rather than having as many as they did. 

Oh, for anyone who really likes 4E, evidently they're working on a tabletop version of _Pillars of Eternity_, which is very clearly built on the 4E lineage.


----------



## Tony Vargas

Jay Verkuilen said:


> I never really encountered that particular attitude in 3.X myself, although that might have been more just who I knew, but boy was that the norm in 4E.



Yep, prettymuch the opposite experience, here.  3.x the attitude was dissect every rule to find & then argue for the interpretation that was most favorable as being "The RAW," 4e, the rules were just clearer and the benefit from pushing an interpretation where there was ambiguity often less profound (and likely to be 'updated' away at any moment, anyway), so less rule-lawyering, but at least as much of a tendency to stick with the rules rather than tweak them, yourself.

But I was talking more about the broader on-line community, which was very RAW-insistent in the 3.x era, and just more sort of RAW-acceptant in 4e.  There was more sound & fury in RAW debates in 3.x, more edition warring in 4e RAW debates.  
Neither were conducive to tinkering.



> My reason for tinkering is rarely for balance reasons



The thing about 4e, though, was that it was surprisingly (for D&D) balanced, so you not only might not tinker with it to fix balance problems, but you might be hesitant to do so for fear of wrecking said balance... 


> although there's some of that of course. Often it's because the RAW do one thing and I want to do something else.



 With Skill Challenges as an alternative to combat, 4e struck me as being pretty open to doing quite different things... at least compared to classic D&D which just blithely assumed dungeon-crawling... 







> With 4E, it was really set up to emphasize a certain synergy type play with a group of 5 PCs that covered the assigned roles and a general assumption that the _players_ were really engaged and very system-knowledgeable.



 Ironically, that was no different than D&D had always been, just spelled out formally (in the olden days, you /needed/ the cleric for healing/undead-turning, the thief for traps/locks, the fighters to take hits & grind damage, and the wizard for magic - or you were likely going to TPK or at least fail the adventure's presumed goals, hard - it just wasn't as up-front about it, and the classes didn't come through too consistently at their assigned roles*).  Players certainly needed to be engaged, yes (and a more balanced game is actually more conducive to that, since you're not left wondering why you even try), but 'system-knowledgeable,' not so much.  4e was very easy to play 'cold' (just walk in, pick up a character you know nothing about, and start playing - prettymuch the assumption of the Encounters program) compared to other editions, but rather disconcerting to step into from a place of extensive experience with earlier editions.  



> If you had fewer PCs or wanted to, say, run a rogues-only game, it was much more difficult to do.



 A pure rogues-only game (I ran one in AD&D, _briefly_) was prettymuch off the table in any edition, rogues being barely-viable even supported by a party (same with an all-fighter or all-low-level-wizard game, for instance).  What was more-nearly viable was a party of PCs who were MC'd Thief/something-else, to bring in the necessary healing, combat power, and, of course, magic-use; doing that in 1e meant a mostly non-/demi-human party, and doing it in 3e just meant plenty of levels in not-rogue, quite possibly adding up to a 'normal'-ish party.  
Using that work-around for an 'all rogue' game in 4e would've been problematic - early 4e lacked the hyprid rules, and Rogues (and 5e sorta kept this, but for Expertise) didn't have the lock on theifly skills they did in prior eds.  But even just playing several different rogues would've been viable enough, especially if your campaign was mostly heists & the like, where combat was to be avoid when possible, and ended swiftly when not - you'd have an all-striker party, afterall, and those were viable in a brittle way, that'd work for 'days' of fewer combats and more skill challenges.  Alternately, depending on what defines a 'rogue' in your mind, you could have several different classes that happened to be participating in the stereotypical rogue lifestyle - the criminal underworld, or the sneaking about, opportunistic approach to adventuring - because class wasn't quite the straightjacket it's generally been (if your concept didn't include magic, any martial class might work for it, for instance).



> I was initially skeptical of 5E but was converted very quickly.



 5e does quite a good job of meeting classic-D&D expectations, and at least doesn't seem alien if your formative experience with D&D was 3.x/PF, as well.  



> You're right, thought, 4E was pretty well designed and I do think the designers had some very good ideas. I wish some of those had been more directly carried forward into 5E. For example, having healing activate hit dice is a good thing. I also wish they'd have kept fewer saving throws or defenses rather than having as many as they did.



 The latter was a mechanical simplification that would have worked very nicely with the rest of 5e's design philosophy, but for (critically) how it would have felt to long-time/returning players, which was the deal-breaker.  The former was solid design from a resource-balancing/management perspective, which, ironically, considering what you had to say above, made the game /less/ sensitive to party make-up, but, again, was too much of a deviation from the Band-Aid-cleric, spell-resource-management-centric traditions of the game.  5e gets by with just giving a /lot/ of classes some access to healing, so you're likely to get enough to get by in spite of the relatively low amount and lack of in-combat - as long as your players don't all decide to be single-class rogues. ;P


----------



## Lanefan

pemerton said:


> When the system uses concrete numbers for range, separation, movement rates, etc, and when the actual rules decisions that take these as inputs are made by the GM based on his/her conception of the ingame situation (which is what TotM tends to mean in 5e), then the GM is exercising a degree of influence of outcomes.
> 
> In AD&D the movement rates relative to the distances, together with the engagement rules, tend to reduce the impact of this - where is does manifest more is in relation to the duration of magical effects once the action is not taking place in a dungeon adjudicated via tight timekeeping rules.



Maybe, though timekeeping outside of a dungeon-crawl environment can easily be made just as tight, and has to be when tracking the durations of some risky spells (_Fly_, I'm looking straight at you!).

That said, tracking spell durations - particularly when not in combat - would seem to have little or no relation to the use/non-use of minis.

Who has what effects on them at any given time is, however, much easier to track and remember with minis than without: by putting coins or poker chips or torn shreds of paper underneath the minis, colour-coded for each effect, it's immediately easy to see who has what going for/against them.

Lanefan


----------



## Lanefan

Jay Verkuilen said:


> 3.X had _Unearthed Arcana_ published as a set of potential house rules along with the tons of third party content and games based on the D20 ruleset, so I'm not sure I'd agree with the assertion about 3.X. 4E to me felt much less easily alterable, with many more pretty clear dependencies among its parts. There seemed to be much less other people publishing with 4E, although that may be more to the way WotC handled the license.



My 3e experience was all from the player side, watching the DM try to tweak the game to suit what he/we were after - a more-or-less 1e style using the 3e chassis - and seeing/playing through the results.  We didn't use many if any add-on books, just 3e core and maybe some setting-specific stuff...and whatever monster books the DM could find. 

Six years in he switched the campaign to 3.5 on the fly in something of a gesture of surrender, and abandoned many of the changes and tweaks he'd done in favour of a more RAW-based approach.

Most of the problems he'd found involved unforeseen knock-on effects both short and long term - one example was that he'd drastically slowed down the advancement rate from what 3e RAW would have in order to make the campaign remain viable for a longer time, which looked fine on paper but eventually knocked-on into throwing wealth-by-level completely out the window.  We ended up far too rich* for our character levels, and this in turn knocked-on into making encounter design a bit of a crapshoot.  And so it went... 

I left that game not long after the 3-to-3.5 jump, in order to free up the time to start my own then-new campaign.

* - there's really no such thing as a PC who is too rich - it's outright impossible.  The term is here used only in reference to game design. 



			
				billd91 said:
			
		

> In some ways, that integrated design was a benefit because many game mechanics worked together better, a hindrance in others because the tolerance of play styles and some other factors narrowed. For example, it was relatively easy to have mixed level game groups in 1e, much harder in 3e and 4e because tolerance for mixed level parties had narrowed as damage output and ACs of monsters were more closely related to the expected level of the party members.



That, and the power curve was much steeper between levels than in 0-1-2-5e.  In 1e a 3rd-level character can find ways to survive and to usefully contribute in a 5th-ish level party.  In 3e that same 3rd-level character would either spend all its time fleeing or be dead very quickly.

Another way of looking at it: I've found that 1e will comfortably allow for about a +/-2 level range around the party average, e.g. if the party average is 6th you can easily have a 4th-8th range within the group.  The power curve is flat enough to support this; though anything beyond it can get problematic.  But 3e (and from what I can tell, 4e) had trouble with as little variance as +/-1 level within the party (a 3-level range) and wasn't even happy with a 2-level range e.g. some are 4th, some are 5th.

This power curve issue also covered monsters.  In 1e a 2nd level party, if careful and maybe a bit lucky and willing to accept a casualty or two, could reasonably expect to take down a hill giant.  In 3e a hill giant wouldn't even work up a sweat in annihilating said 2nd level party, no matter how lucky they got.  To me this is a design flaw rather than a feature.

Lan-"it seems to be my day to ramble"-efan


----------



## The Crimson Binome

Jay Verkuilen said:


> 4E was relentless about requiring synergies among the players.



Was that something which came about later in the product cycle? From what I played in the first year, it seemed like any character was pretty interchangeable with any other character within the same role, and you were fine as long as you covered all the bases.


----------



## pemerton

Tony Vargas said:


> That's d20, not 3e.



You're pointing to a difference of brand. I was talking about the actual mechnical system.


----------



## Tony Vargas

pemerton said:


> You're pointing to a difference of brand. I was talking about the actual mechnical system.



 There's a difference in the system, too, those 3pp games share only core mechanics - D&D is those core mechanics, plus tons of open content, plus proprietary content.


----------



## pemerton

Jay Verkuilen said:


> What I think tended to happen in my experience was that Skill Challenges ended up becoming an exercise in dicing. I don't think that's what the designers' intent was. I'm fairly certain that it was supposed to be an introduction of the kind of modern structured interaction to D&D. I doubt they intended the way a lot of tables ended up using SCs. There were some aspects that made it turn into that, at least where I was. One was the requirement that everybody participate. This often meant that the SC as written would have some weird skills attached just to allow the barbarian's player something to do in a social situation. Our joke for that was "he does pushups to impress the king".



I think that the 4e desginers didn't have the courage of their convictions, and in their presentation of skill challenges tried to speak out of both sides of their mouths. It's clear in the DMG, and even moreso the DMG2, that skill challenges are envisaged as a system comparable to the sort of complex scene resolution one sees in many, many other contemporary RPGs.

But they also presented skill challenges - and the modules doubled down on this - as fiction-free "dice rolling exercises". Presumably this was meant to appeal to people who like rolling dice and aren't interested in the fiction of the RPG. But many people seemed to approach SCs this way even while complaining about it!

Anyway, I find the whole thing very strange. In combat, no one thinks you need an arbitrary rule to get the wizard involved - the wizard fights because s/he is under attack. In a social scene, the way you get the fighter's player to make a check is to frame the situation so that the player will miss out on something s/he wants unless s/he succeeds at a check. In my experience it's not that hard.



Jay Verkuilen said:


> IMO the big problem with 4E's design wasn't that they used that idea, it's that they made _every_ class use it, especially in the early days of 4E. The fighter and rogue both became "spellcasters" of a sort. A lot of players I recall were really undone by that change. They wanted to swing swords, not figure out when to use which power.



This is another thing that I find pretty strange. The idea that choosing what move to make, or what tactic to use, equals choosing what spell to cast, seems like the tail wagging the dog: it's taking an artefact of one particular RPG design (classsic D&D) and projecting it back onto the fiction as if that's just how things are in the world of the fantasy RPG.


----------



## pemerton

Tony Vargas said:


> There's a difference in the system, too, those 3pp games share only core mechanics - D&D is those core mechanics, plus tons of open content, plus proprietary content.



The fact that githyanki are not licensed content has no bearing on whether or not 3E can be kit-bashed.


----------



## Tony Vargas

pemerton said:


> The fact that githyanki are not licensed content has no bearing on whether or not 3E can be kit-bashed.



 3.5 is a lot more than the d20 core rules.  You can build a conceptually unrelated game from the ground up using d20, but you're not kit-bashing D&D 3e.   And, seriously, you cannot discount the community attitude towards RAW at the time.


----------



## Jay Verkuilen

pemerton said:


> I think that the 4e desginers didn't have the courage of their convictions, and in their presentation of skill challenges tried to speak out of both sides of their mouths. It's clear in the DMG, and even moreso the DMG2, that skill challenges are envisaged as a system comparable to the sort of complex scene resolution one sees in many, many other contemporary RPGs.
> 
> But they also presented skill challenges - and the modules doubled down on this - as fiction-free "dice rolling exercises". Presumably this was meant to appeal to people who like rolling dice and aren't interested in the fiction of the RPG. But many people seemed to approach SCs this way even while complaining about it!




Yeah, that's my point about 4E encouraging a very rules lawyer type of play. That happened in my games, even to people who I tended not to think would play that way. Anyone with rules lawyer tendencies was very much drawn in that direction. 





> This is another thing that I find pretty strange. The idea that choosing what move to make, or what tactic to use, equals choosing what spell to cast, seems like the tail wagging the dog: it's taking an artefact of one particular RPG design (classsic D&D) and projecting it back onto the fiction as if that's just how things are in the world of the fantasy RPG.



I suppose, but there's a lot of players who just want to swing their swords and not have to think, "wait, is it time for me to use my Daily...?" The old fighter class was very much for that kind of player---or at least it allowed for that kind of play---and I'm pretty sure we all know that type. Sometimes they're really good players in other ways, say good RPers, but they just don't like screwing around with game mechanics. Unfortunately in the original 4E you had no choice but to be a "spellcaster". 

That's why the Champion archetype is a good thing in 5E. I wish there were a few other types of characters like that.


----------



## Tallifer

I ran 4th edition for four years (until WotC stopped supporting the on-line resources to handle the flood of options) without any grid or miniatures. Theatre of the mind works fine in any edition.

I will say on a tangent that 5th Edition did save my campaign from a dwindling core of three or four players to a waiting list of eager players: I can attract a much broader spectrum of players, both old school and noobies.


----------



## pemerton

Jay Verkuilen said:


> there's a lot of players who just want to swing their swords and not have to think, "wait, is it time for me to use my Daily...?" The old fighter class was very much for that kind of player



A related discussion came up in the "worldbulding" thread.

I agree that a mechanically intricate game like 4e is hard for a "casual" player to get into and do well at. In the world of card games, I would compare bridge to five hundred in this respect. It's a virtue of 500 that it is possible for even a casual player to do passably well without following all the play and counting all the cards (the trump suit is longer; they can be led by a stronger partner; etc; and watch those casual players crumble when the bid is No Trumps!). But that isn't an argument that bridge is a bad game!

EDIT: the champion analogue in 4e is the archer ranger, who does nothing but Twin Strike or the occasional Twin Strike variant as an encouner or daily power. I think it's probably a weakness, though, for this character to have been ranged rather than melee. Melee is, on the whole, more exciting. The flip side being that 4e melee can be pretty lethal if you're not a technically competent player. Which I guess just reinforces the point that 4e is not particularly friendly for the "casual" player.


----------



## Jay Verkuilen

pemerton said:


> I agree that a mechanically intricate game like 4e is hard for a "casual" player to get into and do well at. In the world of card games, I would compare bridge to five hundred in this respect. It's a virtue of 500 that it is possible for even a casual player to do passably well without following all the play and counting all the cards (the trump suit is longer; they can be led by a stronger partner; etc; and watch those casual players crumble when the bid is No Trumps!). But that isn't an argument that bridge is a bad game!




I didn't say it was a bad game---in fact several times I've said that the were some good ideas in 4E---but that was a substantial limitation of it. 4E was, particularly at the medium to higher levels, more like bridge than like a simpler game like, oh, spades or euchre. For it to run well, you had to have a pretty solid knowledge of the system, and that could get very frustrating when a player didn't but was playing a character type that demanded it. I wouldn't necessarily call that kind of player "casual" either. Many of them were much more interested in the RP aspects, but got bogged down in the rules. Players of highly mixed abilities could also be frustrating, too. The fact that there were character types like the original bard that were very much built on operating off turn was often a real source of frustration, too. "Whose turn is it?" was not remotely uncommon to hear in the 4E days; I rarely hear that now.

It was way, way too like MtG in that respect. The folks I knew who were real MtG heads were the ones that liked 4E the best.


----------



## Jay Verkuilen

Lanefan said:


> Who has what effects on them at any given time is, however, much easier to track and remember with minis than without: by putting coins or poker chips or torn shreds of paper underneath the minis, colour-coded for each effect, it's immediately easy to see who has what going for/against them.



Yes, absolutely. We used magnetic chips under the base of the minis for that. Under 4E we still use them but not nearly as much as there are fewer conditions. Sometimes the chip stack would be markedly higher than the mini!


----------



## Jay Verkuilen

Tony Vargas said:


> Yep, prettymuch the opposite experience, here.  3.x the attitude was dissect every rule to find & then argue for the interpretation that was most favorable as being "The RAW," 4e, the rules were just clearer and the benefit from pushing an interpretation where there was ambiguity often less profound (and likely to be 'updated' away at any moment, anyway), so less rule-lawyering, but at least as much of a tendency to stick with the rules rather than tweak them, yourself.




I wasn't active online during 3.X. I'd dropped off in the early '00s. 





> The thing about 4e, though, was that it was surprisingly (for D&D) balanced, so you not only might not tinker with it to fix balance problems, but you might be hesitant to do so for fear of wrecking said balance...   With Skill Challenges as an alternative to combat, 4e struck me as being pretty open to doing quite different things... at least compared to classic D&D which just blithely assumed dungeon-crawling...




I'd played or run so many other skill based games I'd long since used things like SCs.  





> Ironically, that was no different than D&D had always been, just spelled out formally (in the olden days, you /needed/ the cleric for healing/undead-turning, the thief for traps/locks, the fighters to take hits & grind damage, and the wizard for magic - or you were likely going to TPK or at least fail the adventure's presumed goals, hard - it just wasn't as up-front about it, and the classes didn't come through too consistently at their assigned roles*).



Yeah, D&D has always been niche-protected, and certainly it is the case that 4E was just up front about it.  



> Players certainly needed to be engaged, yes (and a more balanced game is actually more conducive to that, since you're not left wondering why you even try), but 'system-knowledgeable,' not so much.  4e was very easy to play 'cold' (just walk in, pick up a character you know nothing about, and start playing - prettymuch the assumption of the Encounters program) compared to other editions, but rather disconcerting to step into from a place of extensive experience with earlier editions.




I'm not sure I agree with the fact that you didn't need to know the system. IMO you needed to know it pretty well, certainly once you got over about 10th level. As I said elsewhere in this thread (in a conversation with pemerton), 4E had some things that mitigated against player engagement, most notably excessive turn length. 

I think we'd long since allowed multiclass rogues, so my memory of a rogues-only type game was a bit skewed. If you were talking about the 2E thief with just humans RAW definitely. Regardless, 4E really assumed that party roles were filled and it was quite challenging not to have them filled IME. In that sense, the party roles were definitely influenced by MMO roles and builds: tank, healer, DPS, etc. 




> The latter was a mechanical simplification that would have worked very nicely with the rest of 5e's design philosophy, but for (critically) how it would have felt to long-time/returning players, which was the deal-breaker.  The former was solid design from a resource-balancing/management perspective, which, ironically, considering what you had to say above, made the game /less/ sensitive to party make-up, but, again, was too much of a deviation from the Band-Aid-cleric, spell-resource-management-centric traditions of the game.  5e gets by with just giving a /lot/ of classes some access to healing, so you're likely to get enough to get by in spite of the relatively low amount and lack of in-combat - as long as your players don't all decide to be single-class rogues. ;P




As to healing surges, IMO that was one of the good idea of 4E. I really wish they'd differentiated the bard from the cleric healing by having the bard do things like activate hit dice (bad WotC! foolish name for that). Basically the bard is able to make use of what you have in you already but the cleric brings something from the outside. But I'm not at all a fan of the bard as a full caster.


----------



## pemerton

Jay Verkuilen said:


> 4E was, particularly at the medium to higher levels, more like bridge than like a simpler game like, oh, spades or euchre.



I agree with this. 



Jay Verkuilen said:


> For it to run well, you had to have a pretty solid knowledge of the system



And this.



Jay Verkuilen said:


> that could get very frustrating when a player didn't but was playing a character type that demanded it.



And this.



Jay Verkuilen said:


> The folks I knew who were real MtG heads were the ones that liked 4E the best.



My group is a mix of long time RPGers (the least experienced RPGer started with Rolemaster nearly 20 years ago now, so had about 10 years RM experience when we started playing 4e), wargamers, boardgamers, etc. (Though for most the M:tG years are well behind them now; one is getting back into it as his kids pick it up.)

I posted this quite a few years ago now, and still think it is true:



pemerton said:


> I can only assume that WotC thought that there were many players like my group, who want a crunchier/more tactical play experience than a game like HeroQuest is going to deliver (half of us are ex-Rolemaster, after all) _but_ who also were looking for a much less simulationist approach to world design, scenario design, scene framing, and action resolution.
> 
> So it's not just that they agreed with Ron Edwards, but also that they thought that the players who would flock to a narrativist-leaning game would be drawn from the ranks of those who love Runequest, Rolemaster and collectable card games.
> 
> And OK, when I put it that way, it looks like a pretty implausible hypothesis from the start!


----------



## Jay Verkuilen

pemerton said:


> I posted this quite a few years ago now, and still think it is true:<snip>




Yes I very much agree. I'm kinda sorta simulationsist, though not a hard core one. This is especially true when it comes to world design, which I always felt was the weakest part of 4E. It didn't have an economy I could follow, for instance. It was super gamist---witness how little detail was presented in the original _Monster Manual_ as an example, just stats---and then the adventure designs were a mix of gamist and narrativist, with essentially no simulation or world-building at all. They didn't even bother to lay out their world, though they constantly mentioned Nerath and its backstory!

In many respects, I think your quote really clarifies for me what I really just didn't like about about 4E. It didn't check one of my own key boxes and tended to get bogged down in aspects I didn't much care for. A good group could get past that, of course. I played some 4E that was a lot of fun, absolutely. I really never liked much liked running it.


----------



## Tony Vargas

Jay Verkuilen said:


> I wasn't active online during 3.X. I'd dropped off in the early '00s.



 well, then you missed jillions of gigapoops of...
...nah, you didn't miss anything.



> I'd played or run so many other skill based games I'd long since used things like SCs.



 Skill based systems go all the way back to Traveler & RQ, but skill-challenge-like structures were more a 90s new-wave innovation, not even Storyteller quite went there, so by D&D standards, adopting a radical new idea after less than 20 tears was wildly innovative..




> Yeah, D&D has always been niche-protected, and certainly it is the case that 4E was just up front about it.



 It also changed conceptual access to the niches, you didn't 'need a cleric' anymore, if the odd player out 'stuck' filling the role was allergic to religion he could play an Artificer or Warlord...

...or the party could do without - everyone still had surges & second wind.



> I'm not sure I agree with the fact that you didn't need to know the system. IMO you needed to know it pretty well, certainly once you got over about 10th level



 I ran Encounters for years, and introduced many brand-new players to the system.  Without preconceptions, it was startlingly easy to do so.  The presentation of the characters, whether off-line CB or Encounters pregen seemed intuitive enough (It wasn't to me: if it wasn't a dense form on goldenrod, it wasn't a D&D sheet!).  



> ), 4E had some things that mitigated against player engagement, most notably excessive turn length.



 It did add up.  Every character had something useful/interesting, and sometimes a bit involved to do most rounds.  Until Essentials, nobody took as long as prior-ed casters could, but everyone took longer than "I attack, hit/miss, n damage."


> I think we'd long since allowed multiclass rogues, so my memory of a rogues-only type game was a bit skewed.



You mean MC'd humans? Well, even humans had the character-with-two-classes option...







> Regardless, 4E really assumed that party roles were filled and it was quite challenging not to have them filled IME.



 it assumed more than it nerfed, really.  I've run a long 4e campaign that's mid-Epic at this point, and they haven't had a defender in like 12 levels or so.  The controller role was broadly accepted as dispensable, everyone had surges, and everyone did damage, so niether leader nor striker functionality was ever entirely lacking.

And, each class had a 'secondary' role - a party with a WIS cleric wasn't that hurt'n for control, a paladin could do quite a bit of healing &buffing, warlord builds could off-tank, and so forth.

Again, many years experience with Encounters: even at low level, when secondary roles were least developed, you could throw together parties if whatever folks wanted to play, have different players each week and generally do fine...

...though there'd be times a role was missed, it wouldn't lead to a TPK or adventure-halting hard fail the way niche protection could 



> In that sense, the party roles were definitely influenced by MMO roles



 Again, every edition had niche-protection, and absolutely needed certain classes (and, often, magic items), MMOs /coppied/ that.



> As to healing surges, IMO that was one of the good idea of 4E. I really wish they'd differentiated the bard from the cleric healing by having the bard do things like activate hit dice (bad WotC! foolish name for that).



 The key trick of surges was that they powered most healing, so you could do without the cleric, and if someone actually wanted to play one, they never had to choose between a cool spell and yet more healing...



> But I'm not at all a fan of the bard as a full caster.



 The poor bard, it had such a long slog to viability.  At least it made progress every ed ..


----------



## Jay Verkuilen

Tony Vargas said:


> Skill based systems go all the way back to Traveler & RQ, but skill-challenge-like structures were more a 90s new-wave innovation, not even Storyteller quite went there, so by D&D standards, adopting a radical new idea after less than 20 tears was wildly innovative..



D&D sure doesn't get into innovations. Storyteller had the extended action, which I recall relying on a lot. It's not a massive conceptual leap towards allowing some degree of teamwork for that. As elaborate as SCs? No, I'd agree, not really, but IMO one of SCs' very problems was how elaborate they were. 




> It also changed conceptual access to the niches, you didn't 'need a cleric' anymore, if the odd player out 'stuck' filling the role was allergic to religion he could play an Artificer or Warlord...




True, although I think some of that was happening in 3.X already. 



> I ran Encounters for years, and introduced many brand-new players to the system.  Without preconceptions, it was startlingly easy to do so.  The presentation of the characters, whether off-line CB or Encounters pregen seemed intuitive enough (It wasn't to me: if it wasn't a dense form on goldenrod, it wasn't a D&D sheet!).




Interesting. Not what I would have expected. Your point about 4E being more open to alternative parties is interesting as well. That doesn't jive with what I recall from when I played it, but different tables behave different ways and the DM can often adapt. The times I saw a non-combined arms party seemed to involve people loading up on strikers and they had problems. 

Still, one of my favorite games I ever played in was 2E where the party was a thief, fighter, paladin, and custom bard class (based on the Bard's Tale bard). The DM in that campaign was very, very good, though. 



> It did add up.  Every character had something useful/interesting, and sometimes a bit involved to do most rounds.  Until Essentials, nobody took as long as prior-ed casters could, but everyone took longer than "I attack, hit/miss, n damage."



Yes, the things I'm mentioning could be examples of good things, but turn length could get to be a problem. It happened in every 4E game I played in, particularly for characters built around either off-turn actions (e.g., the original 4E bard) or turning minor actions into an attack (e.g., the barbarian or avenger). It was a HUGE issue for some players, who seemed to suffer from choice paralysis, math issues, or both. 3.X really hit with math issues, especially at the medium to high levels. 

When I ran 4E I kept it down but only by being quite draconian about turn length and highly encouraging Essentials characters. I really didn't enjoy running 4E, though partly that might have had to do with the fact that I was having some fairly serious health issues at the time which often involved a good bit of "mind fog", something that is very hard to describe unless you've experienced it. 

Still, as I said in this thread to pemerton, one thing that really didn't occur to me now was how gamist with a side of narrativist 4E was; I derive a good deal of what I find enjoyable for DMing from feeling like there's a consistent and logical world, which was something 4E really didn't emphasize at all. It also seemed to bring out the rules lawyers in many players I knew. 




> You mean MC'd humans? Well, even humans had the character-with-two-classes option... it assumed more than it nerfed, really.



Yes, we allowed MC'd humans. Actually we played with fairly different MC rules, much more based on the way BECM treated the elf. Probably best I hadn't even raised this. 



> Again, every edition had niche-protection, and absolutely needed certain classes (and, often, magic items), MMOs /coppied/ that.




4E was pretty clearly a case of the teacher learning from the student. It has lots of influence of MMOs, MtG, and fantasy minis games, all of which were pretty clearly influenced by D&D in various ways. 




> The key trick of surges was that they powered most healing, so you could do without the cleric, and if someone actually wanted to play one, they never had to choose between a cool spell and yet more healing...




Yes, that's true, and it's something I think is missing, though in combat healing is much rarer in 5E in general. 



> The poor bard, it had such a long slog to viability.  At least it made progress every ed ..



I'm not saying the bard should suck, I just don't like that they're forced to be primary casters. Both Rangers and Paladins are half casters, though I'd be happier if they were less so. They are both divine casters, and there isn't a half caster arcane character. I'd really have liked the bard to be able to do things like activate healing surges and have other interesting class feature (but not spells!) buffs, with spellcasting being more of a sideline for them. An artificer as a half caster arcane character would be pretty cool. In fact I think they might have been able to make one class and have those two be archetypes, though maybe that's too much of a stretch.


----------



## Tony Vargas

Jay Verkuilen said:


> D&D sure doesn't get into innovations. Storyteller had the extended action, which I recall relying on a lot. It's not a massive conceptual leap towards allowing some degree of teamwork for that



 Now that you mention it, I do recall Storyteller had a cooperative successes rule of some sort, I remember using it in M:t's.  But it was like the complex skill checks of 3e, same skill, accumulating successes.  



> As elaborate as SCs? No, I'd agree, not really, but IMO one of SCs' very problems was how elaborate they were.



  Not elaborate, so much, it is still just accumulating successes.  The mechanucal differences are that multiple skills are involved, and the 3 failures.  

The conceptual difference is more pronounced in that it's not a single task, but a cooperative effort, in the abstract.  You can put a lot of interest into an SC, with incremental effects for failure & success - the best ones were like mini games in themselves.  You can also leave it at flat accumulation of successes & failures that's pretty blah.

And the math was badly off at first, and the early examples had some issues.




> True, although I think some of that was happening in 3.X already.



 Yep, the Druid got cure light at 1st instead of 2nd, the bard joined the ranks of healers...
...and then there was the WoCLW...



> Interesting. Not what I would have expected. Your point about 4E being more open to alternative parties is interesting as well. That doesn't jive with what I recall from when I played it, but different tables behave different ways



 Yep, there was a stark divide in teactions between new players & storyteller/indie types, OT1H, and longtime & returning D&Ders on the other.  



> . The times I saw a non-combined arms party seemed to involve people loading up on strikers and they had problems.



 One optimization theorem was that the all-Striker party was supreme.  It didn't play out in practice, they were viable, but 'brittle.' 



> , particularly for characters built around either off-turn actions (e.g., the original 4E bard) or turning minor actions into an attack



 Off turn actions really kicked in at Paragon, the first time a group got that far, it was taxing, but you got a handle on it before long.



> When I ran 4E I kept it down but only by being quite draconian about turn length and highly encouraging Essentials characters



 Essentials did take the game back to more varied turn complexity.  A mid-heroic wizard(witch) early in my campaign was notorious for 15-min turns, while the Rogue(thief) in the party went faster.



> Still, as I said in this thread to pemerton, one thing that really didn't occur to me now was how gamist with a side of narrativist 4E was; I derive a good deal of what I find enjoyable for DMing from feeling like there's a consistent and logical world, which was something 4E really didn't emphasize at all.



 If you use D&D as a simulation, you get a very strange world  - but we had a long time to get used to some of that weirdness, and 4e whipped it out from under us.

I've found worlds to feel more real early in an ed, before I've completely sussed out the new system.  I noticed that with both 3e & 4e, but the latter didn't take nearly as long.



> It also seemed to bring out the rules lawyers in many players I knew.



 It was as nothing compared to rules lawyering I was accustomed to in 3.5 - or was guilty of in 1e. 



> Yes, we allowed MC'd humans. Actually we played with fairly different MC rules, much more based on the way BECM treated the elf. Probably best I hadn't even raised this.



 Nah, common variant, no worries.



> I'm not saying the bard should suck, I just don't like that they're forced to be primary casters. Both Rangers and Paladins are half casters, though I'd be happier if they were less so. They are both divine casters, and there isn't a half caster arcane character.



 There's the AT & EK, they're 1/3rd casters.



> I'd really have liked the bard to be able to do things like activate healing surges and have other interesting class feature (but not spells!) buffs, with spellcasting being more of a sideline for them. An artificer as a half caster arcane character would be pretty cool. In fact I think they might have been able to make one class and have those two be archetypes, though maybe that's too much of a stretch.



 I think we've seen a sort of half-caster Artificer.  

Full casters are a better chassis for any sort if support class, though, and that pattern is more 5e-apropriate than the original magic-item factories...


----------



## pemerton

Jay Verkuilen said:


> I'm kinda sorta simulationsist, though not a hard core one. This is especially true when it comes to world design, which I always felt was the weakest part of 4E. It didn't have an economy I could follow, for instance. It was super gamist---witness how little detail was presented in the original _Monster Manual_ as an example, just stats---and then the adventure designs were a mix of gamist and narrativist, with essentially no simulation or world-building at all. They didn't even bother to lay out their world, though they constantly mentioned Nerath and its backstory!





Jay Verkuilen said:


> I derive a good deal of what I find enjoyable for DMing from feeling like there's a consistent and logical world, which was something 4E really didn't emphasize at all.



I'm going to disagree with this - not with your preferences, obviously, but with this take on 4e.

First, it's simply not true that the 4e MM has "just stats". Just off the top of my head, the Demon and Devil entries set out backstories and details of the Abyss and Nine Hells respectively, the Goblin entry has a whole history of goblins and their relationships with one another, the Spider entry has backstory on Lolth, etc.

Second, I also like a "consistent and logical" world, but it may be that my measure of consistency is different from yours. In a fantasy RPG, especially a cosmological fantasy of the sort that 4e is by default, I want thematic coherence, which locates all the little local conflicts and loyalties within a larger cosmological context. 4e is the only version of D&D that does that. (The next closest I know of is AD&D OA, but it's cosmology is less clearly presented.)

Third, the absence of a map of Nerath, and a timeline, is a boon, not a weakness. It means that the thematic elements can be brought into play as needed, to drive the fiction forward, rather than the fiction being cabined within someone else's conception of what makes for an exciting geography and history.

I found the 4e cosmology and "setting"/backstory, which is presented first and foremost in the PHB and MM, inspiring as a GM.


----------



## Jay Verkuilen

Tony Vargas said:


> Now that you mention it, I do recall Storyteller had a cooperative successes rule of some sort, I remember using it in M:t's.  But it was like the complex skill checks of 3e, same skill, accumulating successes. <snip> The conceptual difference is more pronounced in that it's not a single task, but a cooperative effort, in the abstract.  You can put a lot of interest into an SC, with incremental effects for failure & success - the best ones were like mini games in themselves.  You can also leave it at flat accumulation of successes & failures that's pretty blah.
> 
> And the math was badly off at first, and the early examples had some issues.




I think once I got the idea for the extended action and some idea of accumulating success before failure I'd managed to add in other skills. I did that a lot, for instance for chases or other non-combat contests even in 2E. 

4E SCs often had other skills being a real reach---they were clearly designed for game play to pull in other characters. Admirable but often ham-fisted. 





> Yep, the Druid got cure light at 1st instead of 2nd, the bard joined the ranks of healers...




Some of that was in 2E. 



> ...and then there was the WoCLW...




??? Not sure what that is. 




> One optimization theorem was that the all-Striker party was supreme.  It didn't play out in practice, they were viable, but 'brittle.'




Yes, they were super brittle. 



> Off turn actions really kicked in at Paragon, the first time a group got that far, it was taxing, but you got a handle on it before long.   Essentials did take the game back to more varied turn complexity.  A mid-heroic wizard(witch) early in my campaign was notorious for 15-min turns, while the Rogue(thief) in the party went faster.




I felt Essentials returned some more classic feeling characters like the Slayer, who didn't have the standard package of powers. As to off-turn actions... IME some players really never got used to it. 




> If you use D&D as a simulation, you get a very strange world  - but we had a long time to get used to some of that weirdness, and 4e whipped it out from under us.




Full on simulation, of course not but I guess at some level I'm an aficionado of what's been called Gygaxian naturalism, to some degree. 4E threw that completely out the window in favor of a cosmological drama. Ironically, I've done my share of cosmological things, but that's stuff I want to design, not have baked into the finish. 

Another thing I didn't much like was how tiered things were, e.g., orcs for every tier! Again, that breaks with the general idea of Gygaxian naturalism and feels very MMO and gamist. The adventures WotC published were... wow they were a mixed bag at best. There were some good ideas, of course but a lot of them really just felt like elaborate setups for a miniatures set piece. 



> Full casters are a better chassis for any sort if support class, though, and that pattern is more 5e-apropriate than the original magic-item factories...



What I don't like is that the same basic mechanic---spellcasting, from selections of the same lists---is used for too many classes. There are also relatively few higher level buff spells. The high level lists in general kind of suck, though.


----------



## Jay Verkuilen

pemerton said:


> I'm going to disagree with this - not with your preferences, obviously, but with this take on 4e.
> 
> First, it's simply not true that the 4e MM has "just stats". Just off the top of my head, the Demon and Devil entries set out backstories and details of the Abyss and Nine Hells respectively, the Goblin entry has a whole history of goblins and their relationships with one another, the Spider entry has backstory on Lolth, etc.




I think that was later MMs, not the first one, which was notoriously thin on details. I don't know if I still have a copy of it. 




> Second, I also like a "consistent and logical" world, but it may be that my measure of consistency is different from yours. In a fantasy RPG, especially a cosmological fantasy of the sort that 4e is by default, I want thematic coherence, which locates all the little local conflicts and loyalties within a larger cosmological context. 4e is the only version of D&D that does that. (The next closest I know of is AD&D OA, but it's cosmology is less clearly presented.)




They did a massive change to the cosmology, just massive. It was a cool take, but that's one of those changes we didn't ask for. 




> Third, the absence of a map of Nerath, and a timeline, is a boon, not a weakness. It means that the thematic elements can be brought into play as needed, to drive the fiction forward, rather than the fiction being cabined within someone else's conception of what makes for an exciting geography and history.




See to me those are _narrative_ elements. They don't lay out the world, they lay out narrative. I often get inspired by things like maps and timelines and I figure out what kind of stories I want to tell from there, though I'm not usually a really heavy narrative DM. I got bupkus. What was south of the Nentir Vale? No clue.


----------



## cmad1977

I play on roll 20 and don’t always use tokens so... 

5e works great without minis. Works great with minis. 
Unlike some games where minis and grids are mandatory.


----------



## Lanefan

Jay Verkuilen said:


> ??? Not sure what that is.



WoCLW = Wand of Cure Light Wounds.



> See to me those are narrative elements. They don't lay out the world, they lay out narrative. I often get inspired by things like maps and timelines and I figure out what kind of stories I want to tell from there, though I'm not usually a really heavy narrative DM. I got bupkus. What was south of the Nentir Vale? No clue.



If they're going to try and present a setting but not bother to do the heavy lifting of producing a decent map of it (meaning I have to do it myself) then count me as unimpressed.

Which is too bad, as one thing I thought 4e did quite well was its base "points of light" setting idea.

Lanefan


----------



## Jay Verkuilen

Lanefan said:


> WoCLW = Wand of Cure Light Wounds.




Ah, yeah. I recall that. It was a very good out of combat healing tool in 3.x.




> If they're going to try and present a setting but not bother to do the heavy lifting of producing a decent map of it (meaning I have to do it myself) then count me as unimpressed. Which is too bad, as one thing I thought 4e did quite well was its base "points of light" setting idea.




Yeah, I agree that it had some interesting potential, but like a lot of things in 4E, it seemed never to go anywhere due to the team's propensity to flail around.


----------



## pemerton

Lanefan said:


> If they're going to try and present a setting but not bother to do the heavy lifting of producing a decent map of it (meaning I have to do it myself) then count me as unimpressed.





Jay Verkuilen said:


> I agree that it had some interesting potential, but like a lot of things in 4E, it seemed never to go anywhere due to the team's propensity to flail around.



Here are some examples of what can be done with a setting that is theme, and striking elements, but leaves the structure (in terms of detailed geography and history) unsettled.


----------



## Lanefan

pemerton said:


> Here are some examples of what can be done with a setting that is theme, and striking elements, but leaves the structure (in terms of detailed geography and history) unsettled.



Which is all fine for just you running your own game, but what if I and 100 or 100,000 other DMs all want to use (or, because it's the official setting for a major and intended-to-be-mass-market game system, are expected to use) the same setting?

At that point, particularly for any sort of "organized play", you need enough foundation to provide at least a vaguely common experience; and that foundation would at the very least consist of:

 - a general map of a reasonably large area (a continent?) showing major features with enough blank space to allow a DM to place her own elements as desired (the 1e FR map is a fine example)
 - specific maps of a few key locations on the general map (a key city which I'll call Key City; an important realm or two) where the published modules will take place as written
 - a bare-bones history of how some things came to be where and how they are, particularly as they might affect the published modules
 - a (brief!) write-up or gazetteer of the major elements on the maps - Key City, the noteworthy realms, etc.

With this, a DM who just wants to plug and play has enough material to do so, while a DM who wants to tweak or add to or kitbash the setting has a good foundation to start from.

For Nentir Vale in particular I'd expect a map of the Vale area showing some of the points of light, a map of one important city or town or point of light within it, and a general map of what's around/beyond the Vale itself.  For a post-apocalyptic setting like that I'd also find very useful a map of what was where before the apocalypse, though others might want to make this up for themselves.

Lanefan


----------



## pemerton

Lanefan said:


> Which is all fine for just you running your own game, but what if I and 100 or 100,000 other DMs all want to use (or, because it's the official setting for a major and intended-to-be-mass-market game system, are expected to use) the same setting?
> 
> At that point, particularly for any sort of "organized play", you need enough foundation to provide at least a vaguely common experience



Presumably part of the organisation of organised play includes supplying material. My understanding is that the organised play for 4e included a lot of stuff.



Lanefan said:


> For Nentir Vale in particular I'd expect a map of the Vale area showing some of the points of light, a map of one important city or town or point of light within it, and a general map of what's around/beyond the Vale itself.



The DMG had a map of a region (Nentir Vale) and a town (Fallcrest). I've never used them, but did get around to reading that chapter a couple of years after I bought the DMG. They're utterly unremarkable, and largely indisinguishable from any other low-level D&D setting (a forest for elves, mountains for dwarves, raiding goblins, haunted swamps etc).

The stuff that's interesting about 4e's default setting is the cosmology and history of fallen empires etc.


----------



## Jay Verkuilen

pemerton said:


> Here are some examples of what can be done with a setting that is theme, and striking elements, but leaves the structure (in terms of detailed geography and history) unsettled.




Yeah, there are some nice examples. I know people who ran with it like you did. I tried, but never really stuck as it just didn't have too much to work with. I totally get that other people can like that. I don't mind a lack of obvious geography in the sense of requiring a traditional map. I am running something like that myself because the campaign involves lots of planes-hopping, but I guess there is some geography at least in a relational sense. The Points of Light setting just had some mentions and then had a few more mentions later on. I think WotC was self-justifyingly lazy and flailed around a lot with the "points of light" campaign and a lot of other 4E introductions, too, such as Mithrendain in the Feywild. They had some better material in the Shadowfell box. Of course they did have the Gardemore Abbey adventure, too, which was supposed to be good though I never really read it. 

As I said, a lot of it comes down to the fact that I think WotC in 4E and 5E especially has a team that's very much narratively oriented; they don't really pay much attention to my concerns in terms of outlining a world. I understand why as I think they felt that their older material did that and they (IMO incorrectly) think that not providing information leaves the DM free to fill it in. I just don't agree with it. I'm not interested in the level of detail that the Realms got in the 3.X days. That was clearly too much. But the Points of Light setting went way the other direction.


----------



## Lanefan

pemerton said:


> Presumably part of the organisation of organised play includes supplying material. My understanding is that the organised play for 4e included a lot of stuff.



As one who never participated in organized play (in any of the 5 editions) I canony ask: why not give this stuff to the rest of us to use?



> The DMG had a map of a region (Nentir Vale) and a town (Fallcrest). I've never used them, but did get around to reading that chapter a couple of years after I bought the DMG. They're utterly unremarkable, and largely indisinguishable from any other low-level D&D setting (a forest for elves, mountains for dwarves, raiding goblins, haunted swamps etc).



Which, given that the setting itself had been set up as somewhat unique, comes as something of a disappointment.

That said, I've got the 4e DMG and don't remember any of that being in it, though it's a decade or so since I looked closely at it.  Better give it another once-over, I guess. 



> The stuff that's interesting about 4e's default setting is the cosmology and history of fallen empires etc.



Do they provde a map of where those empires used to be, or notes/info on what they did or were known for?

That's the sort of thing that would make it useful.


----------



## pemerton

Lanefan said:


> As one who never participated in organized play (in any of the 5 editions) I canony ask: why not give this stuff to the rest of us to use?



A lot of the FR modules were available for download at one stage. I don't know if they still are. (OK, so now I do: Google took me to this page.)

But when I am buying a book I don't want to pay for stuff I don't need. The 4e DGM would have been (say) $2 cheaper without that Fallcrest chapter in it, which would have suited me fine!



Lanefan said:


> Do they provde a map of where those empires used to be, or notes/info on what they did or were known for?
> 
> That's the sort of thing that would make it useful.



The absence of that is what makes it useful. It means you can use it as necessary without being constrained by a pre-established map or timeline. There's a recent thread on exactly this point.


----------



## pemerton

pemerton said:


> A lot of the FR modules were available for download at one stage. I don't know if they still are. (OK, so now I do: Google took me to this page.)
> 
> But when I am buying a book I don't want to pay for stuff I don't need. The 4e DGM would have been (say) $2 cheaper without that Fallcrest chapter in it, which would have suited me fine!
> 
> The absence of that is what makes it useful. It means you can use it as necessary without being constrained by a pre-established map or timeline. There's a recent thread on exactly this point.






Jay Verkuilen said:


> I think WotC was self-justifyingly lazy and flailed around a lot with the "points of light" campaign and a lot of other 4E introductions, too, such as Mithrendain in the Feywild. They had some better material in the Shadowfell box. Of course they did have the Gardemore Abbey adventure, too, which was supposed to be good though I never really read it.
> 
> As I said, a lot of it comes down to the fact that I think WotC in 4E and 5E especially has a team that's very much narratively oriented; they don't really pay much attention to my concerns in terms of outlining a world.



The fact that they didn't produce the material you wanted, or that they approached "setting" in a different way, doesn't mean they were lazy (self-justifyingly or otherwise). It just means they did something different from what you wanted! (Just as, in 5e, they are doing something different from what I want, producing mostly fiction that tends to serve up a pre-written story rather than provide material to be incorporated by the table into its own story.)


----------



## Jay Verkuilen

pemerton said:


> The fact that they didn't produce the material you wanted, or that they approached "setting" in a different way, doesn't mean they were lazy (self-justifyingly or otherwise). It just means they did something different from what you wanted! (Just as, in 5e, they are doing something different from what I want, producing mostly fiction that tends to serve up a pre-written story rather than provide material to be incorporated by the table into its own story.)



Dunno about you but I always smell a rat whenever I'm told "yeah, we didn't do something... but, really, you're better off because we didn't bother, so _you_ should be the one thanking _us_!" 

I'm with you on not paying for a lot of content I won't use, although my general feeling is that (a) I'm not batting 1000 on knowing what I will and won't use in the future and (b) I do recognize that there are compromises in what gets developed and included in a book. (I mean, I'm in academia... after what peer reviewers do to papers a good bit of the time, they're often unrecognizable.)


----------



## Imaro

pemerton said:


> The absence of that is what makes it useful. It means you can use it as necessary without being constrained by a pre-established map or timeline. There's a recent thread on exactly this point.




I don't get this... the Fallcrest map and description were in the 4e DMG and it didn't seem to have constrained you in any way so why would the setting being fleshed out for those who do find it useful for their playstyle and games put constraints on you?  Honestly I don't see how anything being published, can actually constrain how it's used by a DM/GM...


----------



## Manbearcat

Alright, let me get some responses up.



pemerton said:


> [MENTION=6696971]Manbearcat[/MENTION], another curious thing about responses to 4e is this idea of "DM-proofing". There's a very strong ethos, I think, among D&D players that the GM's job includes deciding outcomes. Which also underpins at least some of the discussion about TotM vs minis/grids.




Absolutely.  Or at the very list, there is a very strong ethos among many D&D players that the GM's job (as lead storyteller) is primarily about curating play generally (and in some cases very specifically) with the abstract/broad play agenda of what (the GM thinks) makes the best story and entails (what the GM thinks is) the most fun.  Its this overly broad/subjective agenda and the extreme discretion/latitude afforded by "the lead storyteller" (coupled with a certain approach to/design of resolution mechanics) that creates a stark contrast with a game like Dungeon World (where agenda/principles/resolution mechanics are hyper-focused/transparent and GM discretion/latitude is very constrained by comparison).

And yes, that coincides nicely with TotM vs minis/grids.  When you have combat resolution machinery that is as intensive as D&D (action economy, ranges, durations, spatial relationships all interfacing EXTREMELY intimately and therefore player-decision-points become enormously dependent upon the parsing of such variables and their inter-connectivity), removing the concreteness moves the spectrum of agency in combat-related decision-points from player overhead to GM discretion.  

I don't see how that could be argued differently.  It can certainly be argued that it makes for a better game because other consideration a, b, or c, but the above remains intact.


----------



## pemerton

Imaro said:


> I don't get this... the Fallcrest map and description were in the 4e DMG and it didn't seem to have constrained you in any way



Because I just ignored it. I've never run a game set in Fallcrest or the Nentir Vale.



Imaro said:


> so why would the setting being fleshed out for those who do find it useful for their playstyle and games put constraints on you?  Honestly I don't see how anything being published, can actually constrain how it's used by a DM/GM...



(1) There's clutter that has to be disregarded. (2) There's communication issues among the group as to what's in and what's out. (3) The authors don't simply do their best work, but subordinate their ideas to the demands of the already established history and geography.


----------



## Manbearcat

Imaro said:


> Of course if it's the level of abstraction that is the issue with SC's for a few/some/many... a better explanation wouldn't have really helped. Some people just want finer granularity and tighter action association in their task resolution and mechanics.




I definitely have some sympathy for this position (not because I hold it personally).  Players like yourself and  @_*Nagol*_ have been very consistent on this point throughout many conversations over the years.  

If a gamer has strident Sim priorities and/or they have Sim priorities localized to their D&D play, then 4e's genre-logic and scene-based considerations/techniques (dramatic arc, escalation, narrative causality, fail forward) are going to be problematic, no doubt.  And if you try to eschew all of these fundamental components to 4e scene-based play and smuggle in Sim priorities/approaches in their stead, the game is going to push back very hard.

You're likely going to end up with boring, stale Skill Challenges where the situation doesn't change dynamically (or much at all), no dramatic arc arises, and it looks/feels like "an exercise in dice rolling."

Our conversation many years ago (it was a good one) regarding "the gorge" is probably the benchmark for the dissonance you're ascribing to the game experience for you (and others like you).  When your mental framework is predicated upon one very particular paradigm and your decision-points (and their outcomes) are anchored to a very different paradigm, its going to be "jarring."  4e's designers could have done a better job illuminating this in the first DMG.



Imaro said:


> Eh, I'm not so sure I agree seeing as how their most recent console videogame... Neverwinter... actually uses the 4e mechanics and plays like a pretty traditional MMOrpg. It's been a while since I've played but if I recall correctly... Basically they've converted the at-will/encounter/daily divide into tiered cool down times for your various 4e powers in the videogame... This is exactly what I think most people are relating them too when they make the videogame comparison...the standard structure implemented for every class, categorization of power levels, and standard recharge times of 4e powers while not an exact 1 for 1 copy, it's not a stretch to see why they reminding many people of modern/prevalent mmorpg mechanics.




Here are my thoughts on this.  There are various components that made people decry 4e for MMORPG mechanics.  Top of the heap was:

_*Defender Control/Marking *_

The problem with this position is that the Marking//Defender Control mechanics in 4e work precisely zero like MMORPG mechanics.  

1)  Mechanically, MMORPG tanks are afforded target control by two distinctive means; (a) Extremely high Threat generation that allows them to gain top position (and stay there) of a creature's Threat List and (b) various Taunts that temporarily rearrange that Threat List to place the tank at the top of the Threat List.

2)  Mechanically, 4e Defenders are afforded target control by way of a catch-22; attack me or suffer a very bad penalty (-2 to hit and I attack you).  That looks exactly like a host of M;tG cards/keywords/play combos.  One of the fundamentals of that game is managing and deploying the pervasive catch-22 decision-points.

_*Rationing (you've mentioned)*_

While there is some superficial overlap here, my sense is that it is this way because SO MANY games (MMOs, CRPGs, card games, board games, TTRPGs, even sports) have time/unit-centered rationing of deployable resources.  On account of that, the position of "MMORPGs have rationing too" doesn't  do enough heavy lifting to convince me.  Further, while they have cooldowns on various schedules, MMORPGs aren't scene-based games (in the way TTRPGs are).  You don't find 1/scene mechanics in there.  You do find 1/scene mechanics in scene-based TTRPGs, in sports (eg Challenges per half) and in some card games (but sub "hand" for "scene").  Cooldown refresh in MMORPGs isn't centered around fictional positioning (because the fiction isn't relevant) whereas in 4e and other TTRPGs, it is.

_*Genre*_

This one is unmistakable (as I mentioned above).  4e's genre and themes has a ton of overlap with DIablo and God of War in particular and surely plenty with WoW (which is difficult not to do given its a massive "world on fire-ey" trope).



But, to your point, there is enough shallow evidence (which shouldn't be particularly convincing when the collective evidence is examined forensically) for someone to come to the false positive of "4e is/was a tabletop MMORPG" if they aren't particularly rigorous in their examination (or if they were part of a smear campaign).


----------



## Manbearcat

Lanefan said:


> There's also a strong ethos that says the DM's job includes tweaking or kitbashing the rules system to suit her own game/self/players; and 4e (and 3e for all that) was not a very kitbash-friendly system - too many knock-on effects where changing something here broke things there, there, and probably there as well.
> 
> And this was intentional on the part of the designers, as their definition of DM-proofing included kitbash-proofing.  Compare this with 5e, where the specific design intention is to make it modular and thus kitbash-friendly.




See, on this I don't particularly agree (surprise!).  I think the problem is how deeply you've internalized the wheels/knobs/levers of AD&D (and the like).  So you look at 4e and you don't see the wheels/knobs/levers.  Meanwhile, there is an enormous range of play available in 4e if you do see those wheels/knobs/levers and know how to deploy them.  To name a trivial few; deploy the Disease/Condition Track (for all manner of things including environmental exposure/injuries/lighting/rations & water), change Short Rest and/or Long Rest dynamics (can't gain one until you've achieved some different fictional positioning than the default), change Healing Surge Recovery, upscale/downscale Encounter Budget, halve Monster HPs but increase damage proportionately, on and on and on.  There are dozens of ways to easily change the tone/pacing/oppressiveness/boldness of the game.

Same thing goes for games like Cortex+ and Powered By the Apocalypse (hell, even a hyper-focused game like Dogs in the Vineyard) .  There are plenty of wheels/knobs/levers to manipulate to create subtle or dramatic difference in play experience or genre/theme/premise.


----------



## Jay Verkuilen

Lanefan said:


> As one who never participated in organized play (in any of the 5 editions) I canony ask: why not give this stuff to the rest of us to use? Which, given that the setting itself had been set up as somewhat unique, comes as something of a disappointment.




Exactly. 



> That said, I've got the 4e DMG and don't remember any of that being in it, though it's a decade or so since I looked closely at it.  Better give it another once-over, I guess.




There is a bit about the Nentir Vale, which is supposed to be in the far north of Nerath, essentially a border march of some sort. Sadly, there's no information about what's to the south except vague implications. 



> Do they provde a map of where those empires used to be, or notes/info on what they did or were known for?



No, they didn't. They mentioned three empires: Arkhosia, Bael Turath, and Nerath. They tell you Arkhosia and Bael Turath were in a war and had fell to bits, leaving dragonborn and tieflings, respectively. Nerath had more recently fallen to a horde of gnolls after their last king did something really stupid. So the Nentir Vale is implied as being a northern march of what was once Nerath but is now abandoned. Nothing about what's to the north of it, south of it, etc., and its walled off by mountains. Who do they trade with? No clue. 

As I recall at the time the argument was that they wanted to leave room for the DM to make their own Nerath unique, but I'm totally with [MENTION=29398]Lanefan[/MENTION] that sketching out the world is why I pay a game designer; I can then fill in the details. And that's why I said "self-serving laziness" upthread. It's like when someone says "he adds a nice synergy to the company" but really means "I hired my nephew because he's my sister's son." But of course, this also is just a matter of different priorities.

Fallen empires is pretty far from unique, too: That's pretty much World of Greyhawk to a T. On that point with @_*pemerton*_, I agree, what was unique about 4E was the more cosmological stuff.


----------



## Imaro

pemerton said:


> Because I just ignored it. I've never run a game set in Fallcrest or the Nentir Vale.
> 
> (1) There's clutter that has to be disregarded. (2) There's communication issues among the group as to what's in and what's out. (3) The authors don't simply do their best work, but subordinate their ideas to the demands of the already established history and geography.




So you know exactly what to do to avoid those constraints (and honestly it doesn't seem like that big of a hassle or much effort on your part) so wouldn't it be better to include it for those whose playstyles are catered to by it vs. leaving it out?  This just seems again like a narrowing of playstyle as opposed to a braod or inclusive one where the specific DM determines what he does or doesn't need for his playstyle and campaign.

OAN... you may not like paying for material you won't use but if the alternative is your favored edition being replaced it seems an extra $2 would be worth staving that off... I mean I don't like or use everything that's published for 5e but I'm glad its catering to a wide range of tastes (even at a small expense to me) because it will keep this edition of the game going for a longer time... IMHO of course.

EDIT: Just to be clear... I'm not saying don't advocate for more of what you want in the game... but I think you have to be willing to subsidize some cost for things that don't appeal to you if you want the game as a published product with a large player base to be sustainable.  I personally have no desire for a warlord, would rather see numerous things before that class in 5e but if they publish a book with a warlord in it and say 75%-99% of the book is still interesting or useful to me I'm going to buy it... and maybe the 5e version of a warlord would win me over, who knows...


----------



## Nagol

Manbearcat said:


> I think the Skill Challenge is a microcosm of a lot of 4e's problems with the D&D player-base.  We've seen it for years and years in the past and you see it again in this thread; people decrying the SC mechanic as an arbitrary practice in (mostly) fiction-irrelevant dicing.  Which is not what it is.  At all (which we've covered a jillion times over).
> 
> I wonder if in DMG 1's initial explanation of SCs if they would have just pointed to indie, scene-based predecessors (say Dogs in the Vineyard or Fate), how much more success there would have been in staving off the "Skill Challenges are just stale dice rolling."  Just 9 months later, DMG2 did a fantastic job of better relaying the fundamental principles of closed scene resolution for non-combat challenges/conflicts.  Then the RC in '11 or '12 put it all together succinctly (yet still didn't mention any indie games).




Certainly, had the DMG1 had better explanation of when to use/ how to use / why to use AND had actually proofed the math so that the mechanic gave the results advertised then I think they'd have gone over more smoothly.



> Now, anyone who has played/run modern indie scene-based games like Cortex+ (any of them) or Blades in the Dark (competing Clocks), will understand precisely what a 4e Skill Challenge is architecturally (dramatic arm, pacing, locked-in resolution by way of system machinery) and they'll understand the principles/techniques that guide its resolution (eg "Establish Goal/Stakes", "Fiction First", "Task and Intent", "Change the Situation", "Fail Forward").
> 
> But folks smuggling in 3.x or AD&D serial exploration expectations into 4e's scene resolution mechanics are invariably going to be very  ,   , and perhaps




Even if you're a GM who can and has run more scene-based / narrative-based games, it doesn't mean you want all RPGs you run to operate that way.  That's why I choose different games after all, to change the feel at the table.



> As an aside, I still don't understand the video game stuff.  4e's combat machinery is quite clearly inspired much more by Magic the Gathering (each Role as a Magic deck archetypes; eg Control, Aggro, Mid-Range)...which is, of course, WotC...so it seems the intuitive extrapolation.
> 
> I'm sure they were thinking something like "wow, if we could get the massive amount of Magic players (which dwarfs D&D players), D&D players, some modern video game players (sure WoW but especially God of War and the Diablo player-base as the "World on Fire" PoL mythology/setting is a match), and entice the indie RPG community (due to its tightness of design, narrativism, and scene-based paradigm)...holy cow that would be THE BIGGEST THING EVER."
> 
> But that didn't work out because there is less overlap than they thought when it came to a lot of D&D players and those other games (or at least a large segment of D&D players that want their D&D gated from those other influences).




I _think_ the video game stuff came from some superficial similarities with WoW (and other MMO) power/recharge mechanics.  Looking at 4e, I didn't see that I saw an attempt for tying resource constraint to narrative arc more than anything.


----------



## aramis erak

pemerton said:


> I think that the 4e desginers didn't have the courage of their convictions, and in their presentation of skill challenges tried to speak out of both sides of their mouths. It's clear in the DMG, and even moreso the DMG2, that skill challenges are envisaged as a system comparable to the sort of complex scene resolution one sees in many, many other contemporary RPGs.
> 
> But they also presented skill challenges - and the modules doubled down on this - as fiction-free "dice rolling exercises". Presumably this was meant to appeal to people who like rolling dice and aren't interested in the fiction of the RPG. But many people seemed to approach SCs this way even while complaining about it!
> 
> Anyway, I find the whole thing very strange. In combat, no one thinks you need an arbitrary rule to get the wizard involved - the wizard fights because s/he is under attack. In a social scene, the way you get the fighter's player to make a check is to frame the situation so that the player will miss out on something s/he wants unless s/he succeeds at a check. In my experience it's not that hard.
> 
> This is another thing that I find pretty strange. The idea that choosing what move to make, or what tactic to use, equals choosing what spell to cast, seems like the tail wagging the dog: it's taking an artefact of one particular RPG design (classsic D&D) and projecting it back onto the fiction as if that's just how things are in the world of the fantasy RPG.




If you read the FR or Greyhawk novels, they DO treat the game mechanics as generally descriptive of the "realities" of those settings. 

SC's as a mechanic _are_ euro-like. They are mechanically intrusive into the fiction, and totally divorced from the setting mechanically - unless the GM enforces a "To do it, say it" for any social challenges, and a "To do it, narrate it" for non-social... but then, the fiction often is mishandled in such action chains. 

They compare favorably to Burning Wheel's duel of wits... but BW's DoW has one thing going for it that skill challenges don't ... the steps and stages are tactical decisions with impacts, and with narrative (at a minimalist level) built into the names of the actions, and the actions having mechanics reflective of that name. Range & Cover, and Fight both do similar for different kinds of combats. Invasion metamechanics (in Jyhad for BWR) and, (Mass) Conflict and Infection (in Burning Empires) both strongly tie as well, in the same ways. But all BW systems feel flat if the players and GM are doing cool narrations; they work, and tell a pretty clear story just on the mechanics, but their best face is when everyone knows how to set up for a narration with implied resolution, but still allowing for the choice of fail-forward or simple failure.


----------



## Jay Verkuilen

aramis erak said:


> If you read the FR or Greyhawk novels, they DO treat the game mechanics as generally descriptive of the "realities" of those settings.




To the extent I've read game fiction (i.e., a bit, but mostly not) they do, but just as often break from it. 




> SC's as a mechanic _are_ euro-like. They are mechanically intrusive into the fiction, and totally divorced from the setting mechanically - unless the GM enforces a "To do it, say it" for any social challenges, and a "To do it, narrate it" for non-social... but then, the fiction often is mishandled in such action chains.




Hmmm... euro-like. I suppose. I think they're a fairly clear extension of "let's make a system with some detail like combat for non-combat situations", which I guess is euro-game. 

The big problem I had with SCs was, as someone noted, the original math was goofy, but beyond that they were often really reaching for skills. The problem I often got when participating in them was that they often felt very forced. Part of that was that I think the way the DMs often used them wasn't really great. They didn't integrate them into narration but instead went around the table very combat-like, with people fishing for skills to see if those were written into the SC, as an encounter that was largely scripted by the writing of the SC. The goal was to ensure participation but only in the most gamist "hear the dice a rollin'" kind of way. Most 4E adventures were written as a series of narratively connected set pieces, either combats or SCs. Of course, one did not actually have to run 4E this way, but that's how much of my experience with it was.


----------



## The Crimson Binome

Manbearcat said:


> While there is some superficial overlap here, my sense is that it is this way because SO MANY games (MMOs, CRPGs, card games, board games, TTRPGs, even sports) have time/unit-centered rationing of deployable resources.  On account of that, the position of "MMORPGs have rationing too" doesn't  do enough heavy lifting to convince me.  Further, while they have cooldowns on various schedules, MMORPGs aren't scene-based games (in the way TTRPGs are).  You don't find 1/scene mechanics in there.



A _lot_ of WoW, for a lot of players, comes down to raid-boss encounters. (Presumably it's also a feature in WoW-clones, but I haven't played any of those to end-game, so I can't say for certain.) The way that they integrate once-per-encounter powers in WoW is to give them a re-charge time around ten minutes, since that's about how long it takes to attempt a raid-boss and then re-group if you failed (or fight your way through the trash, if you succeed).

More generally speaking, when I started playing 4E (well before I had done any raiding), encounter powers seemed directly analogous to the two-minute cooldown powers that you could use about once per fight while questing, and daily powers seemed like one-hour cooldown powers that you had to save unless you absolutely needed them. They didn't seem analogous to CRPGs or card games in any way, because I'd never played a CRPG that had once-per-encounter abilities (unless you count FF7, where spell usage per combat was limited by materia growth), and turns in a card game just didn't seem analogous to individual combat encounters in any way.

I'm not saying that the AED system _was_ copied from World of Warcraft, or that it _couldn't_ have been influenced by any number of other sources. I am saying that, _if_ someone had been tasked with directly converting the WoW style of class abilities where everything had a different length of cooldown, then they probably would have ended up with something very similar to AED. And given the probability of ending up with the AED system if they had intentionally taken that approach, compared to the probability of ending up with the AED system if they'd looked at any number of CRPGs (most of which still resembled the classic D&D model, with daily-only resources) and card games, it's statistically meaningful evidence for the former over the latter.


----------



## Jay Verkuilen

Saelorn said:


> I'm not saying that the AED system _was_ copied from World of Warcraft, or that it _couldn't_ have been influenced by any number of other sources. I am saying that, _if_ someone had been tasked with directly converting the WoW style of class abilities where everything had a different length of cooldown, then they probably would have ended up with something very similar to AED.




IMO that was a very good analysis. The AED system is pretty solidly like a lot of MMOs and CRPGs of the time. Obviously MMOs don't run on pure dramatic time but I think your call on the mapping of IRL time for cooldown to IG time is about right. Even earlier than 4E, White Wolf's games back to the old World of Darkness also used more dramatic "scene" time and many abilities had durations of "one scene." However, many abilities were powered by some kind of more absolute cost resource, such as blood, willpower, gnosis, quantum, etc.


----------



## The Crimson Binome

Jay Verkuilen said:


> IMO that was a very good analysis. The AED system is pretty solidly like a lot of MMOs and CRPGs of the time. Obviously MMOs don't run on pure dramatic time but I think your call on the mapping of IRL time for cooldown to IG time is about right. Even earlier than 4E, White Wolf's games back to the old World of Darkness also used more dramatic "scene" time and many abilities had durations of "one scene." However, many abilities were powered by some kind of more absolute cost resource, such as blood, willpower, gnosis, quantum, etc.



I have heard about the White Wolf system, but I still don't understand it. What exactly is a "scene" in the context of how the world is supposed to work?


----------



## Manbearcat

Saelorn said:


> A _lot_ of WoW, for a lot of players, comes down to raid-boss encounters. (Presumably it's also a feature in WoW-clones, but I haven't played any of those to end-game, so I can't say for certain.) The way that they integrate once-per-encounter powers in WoW is to give them a re-charge time around ten minutes, since that's about how long it takes to attempt a raid-boss and then re-group if you failed (or fight your way through the trash, if you succeed).
> 
> More generally speaking, when I started playing 4E (well before I had done any raiding), encounter powers seemed directly analogous to the two-minute cooldown powers that you could use about once per fight while questing, and daily powers seemed like one-hour cooldown powers that you had to save unless you absolutely needed them. They didn't seem analogous to CRPGs or card games in any way, because I'd never played a CRPG that had once-per-encounter abilities (unless you count FF7, where spell usage per combat was limited by materia growth), and turns in a card game just didn't seem analogous to individual combat encounters in any way.
> 
> I'm not saying that the AED system _was_ copied from World of Warcraft, or that it _couldn't_ have been influenced by any number of other sources. I am saying that, _if_ someone had been tasked with directly converting the WoW style of class abilities where everything had a different length of cooldown, then they probably would have ended up with something very similar to AED. And given the probability of ending up with the AED system if they had intentionally taken that approach, compared to the probability of ending up with the AED system if they'd looked at any number of CRPGs (most of which still resembled the classic D&D model, with daily-only resources) and card games, it's statistically meaningful evidence for the former over the latter.




There are some problems with what you've written above.

Back in 2006 and 2007 when 4e was being designed, WoW was at Vanilla and Burning Crusades.  At that point in its history you're looking at Cooldown schedules almost universally at the following intervals:

6 seconds (standard specials)
15 seconds (nonstandard specials or specials that interfaced with/required other abilities)
30 seconds (short term cooldowns)
1 minute (mid-term cooldowns)
3 minutes (major cooldowns or build-defining cooldowns that were typically 31 point talents)
6 minutes (eg major-er cooldowns that were typically build-neutral but class-defining)
10 minutes (eg Rebirth or in-combat rez)

Depending on the class function/utility, build, damage/threat/healing rotation, you would have some number of these.  Most boss fights were in the neighborhood of 6-12 minutes (depending on the fight, the skill of your players/execution, and the construction of your raid group).  In no way did the WoW endgame raid environment cooldown setup (which was completely asymmetrical across classes, unlike AEDU) resemble the 4e paradigm.  You had nothing resembling cross-class, or even cross-build resource scheduling symmetry (like in 4e).  Further, the paradigm wasn't remotely reminiscent (on paper or in play) of at-will (A), once/scene (E), once/adventure or day (D).  You had a mish-mash of:

* Specials-spamming (dozens and dozens of deployments)
* short term CD timing to coincide with other abilities (10+ to optimize payload)
* mid-term CDs (6-8 deployments which were pretty much universally for utility or an assist in managing some aspect of an offensive/support rotation)
* long-term CDs several times (3-4) for (pretty much universally for massive damage/healing spikes/AoE or survivability)
* your huge CDs (should you even ave them at all...several classes/builds didn't) once or twice or not at all if the situation couldn't leverage them

So, yeah.  Under even the slightest of rigor in examination, one can see that 4e and WoW's resource scheduling weren't like each other (in the important aspects of 1 cross-class symmetry of scheduling, 2 scheduling analogue generally, and 3 fiction/scheduling relationship).  

Again, very, very, very superficially like WoW and like dozens of other games/media.  I never saw people who (a) liked/played/understood WoW and (b) liked/played/understood 4e make this comparison.  I only saw it from edition warriors who had contempt for one or both games and were ignorant of one or both paradigms because it could be easily weaponized to call 4e shallow and get like-minded ignorant and angry edition warriors to disingenuously repeat the meme.

4e combat, when run (both GM and players) correctly/coherently by people who knew what they were doing resembled something much closer to a thematic, fiction-relevant (short-term and long-term stakes and relevant, dynamic fictional positioning) game of opposing M;tG teams with some sort of wild-card feature in play (where stunting/terrain would come into play).  It felt nothing from a mechanical overhead perspective or a general feel/ambiance of a WoW raid.


----------



## Jay Verkuilen

Saelorn said:


> I have heard about the White Wolf system, but I still don't understand it. What exactly is a "scene" in the context of how the world is supposed to work?




It's very much like in a movie. 
A scene could be various things: Combat, a chase, a social interaction, investigation, etc. For example, thinking in a game like _Vampire: the Masquerade_, a social scene might be:

_You're new in town. You need to get introduced to the Prince. You had already made yourself known to the prince's agent and he sets up a meeting inside the nightclub that he uses for his headquarters. The scene happens when you're brought into the Prince's office. He sits you down, offers you blood in a crystal glass and starts asking you questions. This may involve several rolls, usually on social skills, depending on how RP goes. Some of these may be by you, others by the prince. Depending on how things go, he offers you a provisional place in his city, tells you to get lost, or as you are leaving carefully pushes the concealed button under his desk that indicates that the two vampires and six ghouls waiting outside with loaded shotguns are to finish you off when you leave.... The scene ends when you leave the Prince's office._

In 4E terms these would be encounters or skill challenges.


----------



## Lanefan

Jay Verkuilen said:


> Most 4E adventures were written as a series of narratively connected set pieces, either combats or SCs.



Having converted a few 4e adventures to my old-school system and run them I can very much concur with this statement at least as far as the 4e adventures I've seen/converted/run go.

What I found was that the combat set-pieces were mostly* very good - a true strength of 4e adventure design, IMO - but the SC set-pieces needed to be stripped out and converted to either role-play or exploration pieces in a more old-school sense.

* - my one almost-universal complaint was that the writers tended to ignore the consequences and what-ifs of the party going off script and-or not approaching the encounter as expected; and while modules from all editions and eras have had this issue, for some reason I found it most problematic in the 4e modules.

Lanefan


----------



## The Crimson Binome

Jay Verkuilen said:


> It's very much like in a movie.
> A scene could be various things: Combat, a chase, a social interaction, investigation, etc.



Okay, but how is that supposed to work in context of actually living in that world? When I'm playing as my magical elf, or vampire or whatever, how do I know that my once-per-scene ability has been refreshed?


----------



## Jay Verkuilen

Lanefan said:


> Having converted a few 4e adventures to my old-school system and run them I can very much concur with this statement at least as far as the 4e adventures I've seen/converted/run go.
> 
> What I found was that the combat set-pieces were mostly* very good - a true strength of 4e adventure design, IMO - but the SC set-pieces needed to be stripped out and converted to either role-play or exploration pieces in a more old-school sense.




Yeah, SCs were very railroad-y. They did a good job with the combat oftentimes, partly because 4E was a pretty solid minis game for the most part. There were flaws: For example, early 4E monster design left many monsters as essentially punching bags with too many hit points and not nearly enough offense. 




> * - my one almost-universal complaint was that the writers tended to ignore the consequences and what-ifs of the party going off script and-or not approaching the encounter as expected; and while modules from all editions and eras have had this issue, for some reason I found it most
> problematic in the 4e modules.




This is a general problem with narratively-driven games, of course.


----------



## Jay Verkuilen

Saelorn said:


> Okay, but how is that supposed to work in context of actually living in that world? When I'm playing as my magical elf, or vampire or whatever, how do I know that my once-per-scene ability has been refreshed?




Scenes didn't delineate when an ability was _refreshed_. Instead they delineated when a duration ended. They would typically end when the Storyteller said "OK, the scene ends." A good ST would make it pretty obvious, though. Refreshing usually required rest or some other resource gathering. For instance, in VtM abilities were driven primarily using blood. You had to pay blood costs to activate an ability. How much that would cost depended on the ability. Blood was recovered when you fed and was also lost when you were active, thereby requiring you to go hunting to keep active. Of course, clever vampires had backup supplies, such as old blood bank blood, to make sure they stayed topped up. Finding a source was a key part of the game. Other games had other resources. In _Mage: the Ascension_, often your effects didn't require any particular resource, but you could use some to make it more likely your casting would succeed or do well.


----------



## Manbearcat

Nagol said:


> Certainly, had the DMG1 had better explanation of when to use/ how to use / why to use AND had actually proofed the math so that the mechanic gave the results advertised then I think they'd have gone over more smoothly.




I don't disagree.  Explanation and iteration were certainly part of the problem, but smuggling in play priorities that don't mesh with dramatic/abstract scene resolution (whether rightly or wrongly) is also a problem (which can circle back to explanation).  I also think if most everyone who ran/played 4e had experience playing/running dramatic scene-based games, the machinery would have been easily understood and deployed in a coherent fashion.  

For instance, you don't see Blades in the Dark GMs/players or Cortex+ GMs/players complaining about Competing Clocks or Social Action Scenes or Heists being static, dice-rolling affairs.  



> Even if you're a GM who can and has run more scene-based / narrative-based games, it doesn't mean you want all RPGs you run to operate that way.  That's why I choose different games after all, to change the feel at the table.




I'm sure you know I agree with that (hence my post above), which is the same reason why I run a great many different types of games.  

With respect to D&D though, the same thing works the other way (and a third way if you feel like D&D is really a gamist, puzzle-solving, dungeon-exploration test of hard-earned skill).  

At its heart, much of this discussion (and the last edition war) comes down to "what is the essence of D&D" and "who does it belong to."  There is an enormous contingent of (remaining) folks on ENWorld who feel "the essence of D&D" is (something like) D&D kitchen sink tropes/AD&D default cosmology, Sim priority with related granular exploration (with attendant task resolution) of granular/established setting and/or AP/metaplot, non-mythic martial heroes, and a GM who is very heavily involved in action resolution/plot trajectory.

Given that there are always going to be significant disagreement on "the essence of D&D" and "who does D&D belong to" along with EXTREME variance in investment in those questions, entertaining those questions (and relating them to your quote from above) is always going to (effectively) be either a battle cry or a reason to say "eff it" and walk away from conversation.



> I _think_ the video game stuff came from some superficial similarities with WoW (and other MMO) power/recharge mechanics.  Looking at 4e, I didn't see that I saw an attempt for tying resource constraint to narrative arc more than anything.




Covered this in my post above and the one before that.


----------



## The Crimson Binome

Manbearcat said:


> Again, very, very, very superficially like WoW and like dozens of other games/media.



I guess it's a matter of perspective. To me, and to many others, the similarity seems obvious. It's not exact, any more than you'd expect a translation from real-time-with-cooldowns to turn-based-in-six-second-increments would be, but it's close enough.

One innovation in 4E was in tying every class to exactly the same schedule. In that way, early WoW more-closely resembles 5E, where each class has a different allocation between short-rest and long-rest abilities.


Manbearcat said:


> I never saw people who (a) liked/played/understood WoW and (b) liked/played/understood 4e make this comparison.  I only saw it from edition warriors who had contempt for one or both games and were ignorant of one or both paradigms because it could be easily weaponized to call 4e shallow and get like-minded ignorant and angry edition warriors to disingenuously repeat the meme.



That could be biasing your perspective, then. In my local scene, even the big fans of 4E will call it very WoW-like, and everyone is very quick to acknowledge how that's not a bad thing at all.


----------



## The Crimson Binome

Jay Verkuilen said:


> Scenes didn't delineate when an ability was _refreshed_. Instead they delineated when a duration ended. They would typically end when the Storyteller said "OK, the scene ends."



The Storyteller doesn't exist within the game world, though. My character can't ask the Storyteller whether the scene is finished or not, or hear what they tell me at the table. That's my issue with a lot of scene-based mechanics, is the disconnect between player and character. (If Vampires regain resources by resting, or feeding, then that's fine; it's something that actually exists within the world, which the character can understand and interact with.) It happened in late 3.x, as well, as soon as they introduce "per encounter" abilities; you had players trying to trigger the encounter flag by initiating trivial encounters, and the DM was left fumbling for excuses as to why it didn't actually work that way.

I feel like the only way to interact with scene-based game-play is as a player rather than as a character, because if the character tried to understand it, then it wouldn't make sense to them.


----------



## Jay Verkuilen

Saelorn said:


> The Storyteller doesn't exist within the game world, though. <...> I feel like the only way to interact with scene-based game-play is as a player rather than as a character, because if the character tried to understand it, then it wouldn't make sense to them.




That could certainly be an issue and they did have a time limit for scene-based powers in case it mattered... 5 minutes sounds right, but I don't really recall for sure. Despite it sounding wishy-washy, I generally found that it worked OK because our group navigated fairly well what "a scene" meant to us. We all knew reasonably well "yeah, that felt like the end of a scene."

As to players initiating trivial encounters, in a game like VtM that's gonna get you. Recall that your resource spend is blood, which is a hard currency. In MtA you started running risks for casting over and over in the form of the dreaded Paradox. And, ultimately, there's no game-mechanical benefit for doing that.


----------



## Nagol

Manbearcat said:


> I don't disagree.  Explanation and iteration were certainly part of the problem, but smuggling in play priorities that don't mesh with dramatic/abstract scene resolution (whether rightly or wrongly) is also a problem (which can circle back to explanation).  I also think if most everyone who ran/played 4e had experience playing/running dramatic scene-based games, the machinery would have been easily understood and deployed in a coherent fashion.
> 
> For instance, you don't see Blades in the Dark GMs/players or Cortex+ GMs/players complaining about Competing Clocks or Social Action Scenes or Heists being static, dice-rolling affairs.




Though if you limited the game to those GMs experienced with dramatic scene-based games, you are certainly limiting the potential pool of games.  I'm not sure even then you'd get coherent cross-table play; I don't think WotC knew what it was they were delivering sufficiently well to target a specific play style.  Hence the relatively poor "influencing the baron" example SC.  

Could specific DMs perform well with the game?  Absolutely proven to be true.  By all accounts I've read, later iterations of advice  was much better targeted and focused on the type of play well-supported by the tools provided (and the tools themselves went through a whole bunch of iterations to fix the math, extend options, and generally become more usable).

In many ways the original SC could be viewed as a formalization of extended skill use seen in a lot of games and a lot of tables even those with "sim" priorities.



> I'm sure you know I agree with that (hence my post above), which is the same reason why I run a great many different types of games.
> 
> With respect to D&D though, the same thing works the other way (and a third way if you feel like D&D is really a gamist, puzzle-solving, dungeon-exploration test of hard-earned skill).
> 
> At its heart, much of this discussion (and the last edition war) comes down to "what is the essence of D&D" and "who does it belong to."  There is an enormous contingent of (remaining) folks on ENWorld who feel "the essence of D&D" is (something like) D&D kitchen sink tropes/AD&D default cosmology, Sim priority with related granular exploration (with attendant task resolution) of granular/established setting and/or AP/metaplot, non-mythic martial heroes, and a GM who is very heavily involved in action resolution/plot trajectory.
> 
> Given that there are always going to be significant disagreement on "the essence of D&D" and "who does D&D belong to" along with EXTREME variance in investment in those questions, entertaining those questions (and relating them to your quote from above) is always going to (effectively) be either a battle cry or a reason to say "eff it" and walk away from conversation.




It is a problem often seen in sequels and later versions of pretty much everything.  What can we change to suit *our* preferences and/or answer generalized criticism about the product without seriously annoying the more passionate customers of our previous version?  The more passionate the customer base, the greater the risk.  When you decide the change the basic expectation for play style, you really need to prepare the audience, provide copious well-designed examples, and be prepared to answer the terrible question: "Why?" over and over again.  

If the change is large enough or the divisions run deep enough, you may even want to have a couple of versions available for purchase.  It helps to prevent defections en masse to a savvy competitor.


----------



## aramis erak

Saelorn said:


> I have heard about the White Wolf system, but I still don't understand it. What exactly is a "scene" in the context of how the world is supposed to work?




A scene generally is defined more by when it ends...
As I understand it for White wolf, pretty much a scene ends when...

PC's change location significantly 
focus changes from PC's at location A to those at location B
PC(s) leave(s) with NPC(s) for "Private Scene", even if in same overall space as the preceding scene
Combat has ended and any immediate follow-up is done (tying up prisoners, first aid, or defacing the bodies)
You go to downtime activities
all PC's sleep or enter torpor (or go on extended watch over others who are)
for Vampires, sun-up/sun-down can be used as a scene end, as well.


----------



## Shasarak

Manbearcat said:


> There are some problems with what you've written above.
> 
> Back in 2006 and 2007 when 4e was being designed, WoW was at Vanilla and Burning Crusades.  At that point in its history you're looking at Cooldown schedules almost universally at the following intervals:
> 
> 6 seconds (standard specials)
> 15 seconds (nonstandard specials or specials that interfaced with/required other abilities)
> 30 seconds (short term cooldowns)
> 1 minute (mid-term cooldowns)
> 3 minutes (major cooldowns or build-defining cooldowns that were typically 31 point talents)
> 6 minutes (eg major-er cooldowns that were typically build-neutral but class-defining)
> 10 minutes (eg Rebirth or in-combat rez)
> 
> Depending on the class function/utility, build, damage/threat/healing rotation, you would have some number of these.  Most boss fights were in the neighborhood of 6-12 minutes (depending on the fight, the skill of your players/execution, and the construction of your raid group).  In no way did the WoW endgame raid environment cooldown setup (which was completely asymmetrical across classes, unlike AEDU) resemble the 4e paradigm.  You had nothing resembling cross-class, or even cross-build resource scheduling symmetry (like in 4e).  Further, the paradigm wasn't remotely reminiscent (on paper or in play) of at-will (A), once/scene (E), once/adventure or day (D).  You had a mish-mash of:
> 
> * Specials-spamming (dozens and dozens of deployments)
> * short term CD timing to coincide with other abilities (10+ to optimize payload)
> * mid-term CDs (6-8 deployments which were pretty much universally for utility or an assist in managing some aspect of an offensive/support rotation)
> * long-term CDs several times (3-4) for (pretty much universally for massive damage/healing spikes/AoE or survivability)
> * your huge CDs (should you even ave them at all...several classes/builds didn't) once or twice or not at all if the situation couldn't leverage them
> 
> So, yeah.  Under even the slightest of rigor in examination, one can see that 4e and WoW's resource scheduling weren't like each other (in the important aspects of 1 cross-class symmetry of scheduling, 2 scheduling analogue generally, and 3 fiction/scheduling relationship).
> 
> Again, very, very, very superficially like WoW and like dozens of other games/media.  I never saw people who (a) liked/played/understood WoW and (b) liked/played/understood 4e make this comparison.  I only saw it from edition warriors who had contempt for one or both games and were ignorant of one or both paradigms because it could be easily weaponized to call 4e shallow and get like-minded ignorant and angry edition warriors to disingenuously repeat the meme.
> 
> 4e combat, when run (both GM and players) correctly/coherently by people who knew what they were doing resembled something much closer to a thematic, fiction-relevant (short-term and long-term stakes and relevant, dynamic fictional positioning) game of opposing M;tG teams with some sort of wild-card feature in play (where stunting/terrain would come into play).  It felt nothing from a mechanical overhead perspective or a general feel/ambiance of a WoW raid.




I think that it is quite interesting that two people can look at the same data and not only draw the opposite conclusions but also accuse the other of being disingenuous.


----------



## Jay Verkuilen

Shasarak said:


> I think that it is quite interesting that two people can look at the same data and not only draw the opposite conclusions but also accuse the other of being disingenuous.




It's the internet. That's what we do.


----------



## Tony Vargas

Manbearcat said:


> I don't disagree.  Explanation and iteration were certainly part of the problem, but smuggling in play priorities that don't mesh with dramatic/abstract scene resolution (whether rightly or wrongly) is also a problem (which can circle back to explanation).  I also think if most everyone who ran/played 4e had experience playing/running dramatic scene-based games, the machinery would have been easily understood and deployed in a coherent fashion.



 Or even just /hadn't/ internalized the sort of rules-as-laws-of-physics backwards-simulation ('process sim' I guess the Forge called it) that seemed so common in D&D circles.

I did notice that the 'real roleplayer'/'storyteller' set that I happened to know took to 4e easily, as did entirely new players, while long-time D&Ders who weren't into a lot (or any) other games were stymied by it.  A big part of the appeal of D&D is the consistency it's had from edition to edition over the decades - I know, it doesn't seem like a lot of consistency, but going Basic>Advanced>2e>3e>PF>5e is a lot less change/more consistency than going 0D&D>Traveler>RQII>Superworld>Over the Edge>Storyteller>FATE>Godlike>Gumshoe>etc.  



Jay Verkuilen said:


> Dunno about you but I always smell a rat whenever I'm told "yeah, we didn't do something... but, really, you're better off because we didn't bother, so _you_ should be the one thanking _us_!"



 To be fair, D&D has done that sort of not doing a /lot/.  So have the few games that seriously challenged it, like Storyteller and PF.



pemerton said:


> Presumably part of the organisation of organised play includes supplying material. My understanding is that the organised play for 4e included a lot of stuff.



 Encounters had complete little modules that were laid out in a very easy to run, linear, session-by-session way, with poster maps, tokens, and pregen characters - all you needed was dice.
But, yeah, the 4e default 'setting' was not a setting, but a suggestion of a setting, rather like Greyhawk in the early days of the hobby.


----------



## pemerton

Tony Vargas said:


> backwards-simulation ('process sim' I guess the Forge called it)



As far as I know "process sim" is a phrase that is used on these boards but not at the Forge. The closest Forge term is "purist for system" simulation.

Example of "purist for system" include RQ, RM, and Classic Traveller as they are typically played. I have nuch less experience of Harn Master and none of Chivalry & Sorcery other than a bit of reading but I'm pretty sure these would fall into the same camp.

What distinguishes those systems as typically played, and what (I think) the term "process sim" is meant to capture, is that _every mechanical determination_ correlates in a pre-given fashion to some identifiable event or process in the fiction.

So in RM, a roll to hit is literally that - a roll to see if weapon contacts body. There is a chart that reflects different sorts of armour, which encoude the principle (true in the fiction, and at least purportedly grounded ina real-life principle) that heavier armour makes it harder to dodge blows, but will reduce the damage they inflict.

In RQ a roll to hit is slightly different - it is a roll to see if an attack forces the opponent to parry or dodge to avoid being struck. If the parry or dodge check then fails, the blow _does_ strike. There is then a further mechanical process to determine if armour absorbs/deflects the blow.

Traveller's rules for attacking in person vs person combat are closer to D&D's - armour simply adjustts the roll to hit, and the attack resolution process doesn't tell you _how_ a successful attack hurt its target (whereas RQ does this via hit location, and RM via the crit charts) - and so to that extent less "process sim". But there are other ingame phenomena and events that it tracks more rigorously than RM or RQ, such as morale (for both PCs and NPCs).

None of this is "backwards simulation". It is not reading the mechanics back into the in-fiction processes. (An example of backwards simulation in RM is the PC build rules: these are designed to, among other things, acieve a degree of class balance, and reading _those_ back into the fiction, to reach the conclusion that they model a world in which studying magic causally impedes one's ability to master weapon play would be a case of backwards simulation.)

3E and PF are often described as "process sim"/simulationist games, but I think that's too simplistic. The grapple rules in 3E clearly do try and simulate a series of ingame events/processes that culminate in a creature being grappled; the disarm and trip rules are comparable in this respect. But the core combat mechanics remain similar to classic D&D, and are not naturally conducive to that sort of simulationist approach, because there is nothing in particular that (i) getting a defensive bonus corresponds to , and (ii) that losing hp corresponds to.

Eg of (i) - the rules label a red dragon's AC bonus as "natural armour", but it's not clear what - in the fiction - that equates to: given that the best bonus from magical plate armour is only half some of the upper end nautral armour bonuses, it is clear that the "natural" armour of a red dragon can somehow outstrip what even the greatest dwarven artificer can forge, but why? Reading this back into the fiction would be a type of "backwards simulation".

Eg of (ii) - any hit points thread ever will remind us that the rules don't mandate that losing hit points corresponds to any particular sort of occurence in the fiction other than the tautologous "that bit of fighting went against you".


----------



## Shasarak

pemerton said:


> 3E and PF are often described as "process sim"/simulationist games, but I think that's too simplistic. The grapple rules in 3E clearly do try and simulate a series of ingame events/processes that culminate in a creature being grappled; the disarm and trip rules are comparable in this respect. But the core combat mechanics remain similar to classic D&D, and are not naturally conducive to that sort of simulationist approach, because there is nothing in particular that (i) getting a defensive bonus corresponds to , and (ii) that losing hp corresponds to.
> 
> Eg of (i) - the rules label a red dragon's AC bonus as "natural armour", but it's not clear what - in the fiction - that equates to: given that the best bonus from magical plate armour is only half some of the upper end nautral armour bonuses, it is clear that the "natural" armour of a red dragon can somehow outstrip what even the greatest dwarven artificer can forge, but why? Reading this back into the fiction would be a type of "backwards simulation".
> 
> Eg of (ii) - any hit points thread ever will remind us that the rules don't mandate that losing hit points corresponds to any particular sort of occurence in the fiction other than the tautologous "that bit of fighting went against you".




I would disagree that either Defensive Bonus or Losing HP correspond to nothing in particular.  Usually it is obvious from both the fiction and the narrative that if you have a shield giving you a Defensive Bonus or even magical Dragon scales for example.  And usually it is very clear that being attacked by someone with a sword will give you sword damage to your HPs rather then some kind of miscellaneous tautology.


----------



## pemerton

Shasarak said:


> sword damage to your HPs



I don't know what "sword damage" is.


----------



## Shasarak

pemerton said:


> I don't know what "sword damage" is.




Damage you take from a sword attack is sword damage.  Damage you take from a fire attack is fire damage.

What is the difference, are they not just the same miscellaneous damage to hit points?  

Well, no.  If you are a Tiefling with damage resistance to fire then you would be taking less fire damage.  If you wear Adamantine armour you would be taking less damage from swords.

Therefore the rules *do* mandate that losing hit points must correspond to the particular occurence in the fiction.


----------



## Sadras

Saelorn said:


> I guess it's a matter of perspective. To me, and to many others, the similarity seems obvious. It's not exact, any more than you'd expect a translation from real-time-with-cooldowns to turn-based-in-six-second-increments would be, but it's close enough.




I do not know if this has been mentioned already but a fair amount had to do with presentation and more specifically the presentation of the powers in the PHB (which Hussar has mentioned plenty on these boards) - similar to many PC games (including D&D games, Diablo, WoW, DotA, HoN...etc) when one activates a ability or spell and watching the ability or spell slowly refresh itself.


----------



## Tony Vargas

Sadras said:


> similar to many PC games (including D&D games, Diablo, WoW, DotA, HoN...etc) when one activates a ability or spell and watching the ability or spell slowly refresh itself.



 What, there's a vague similarity between D&D and the CRPGs that imitated it?    
And, it's pretty vague.  Taking a short or long rest seems conceptually distinct from a 'cool down' that just happens.  



pemerton said:


> As far as I know "process sim" is a phrase that is used on these boards but not at the Forge. The closest Forge term is "purist for system" simulation.



 What?  Really?

IDK what is about Forge terminology, but it always seems so utterly unintuitive to me, like a major part of the brainstorming going on there was picking out the absolute worst possible word of phrase to label a theory with.  ::sigh::



> Example of "purist for system" include RQ, RM, and Classic Traveller as they are typically played.



 I thought you'd said in the past they were 'simulationist?'



> What distinguishes those systems as typically played, and what (I think) the term "process sim" is meant to capture, is that _every mechanical determination_ correlates in a pre-given fashion to some identifiable event or process in the fiction.



 Yeah, that's more or less the sense I'd gotten from 'process sim,' I'm just taking it a step further, I guess...




> None of this is "backwards simulation". It is not reading the mechanics back into the in-fiction processes.



 But that is something I observe in D&D.  D&D is not a simulation, not even a bad one, it's very abstract, but people do, none-the-less, treat it as if it were.  The only way to do that is to reverse the normal pathway of simulation, from reality to model to simulation:  so D&D is treated as a /simulation of D&D/, which, of course, it simulates perfectly.  



> But the core combat mechanics remain similar to classic D&D, and are not naturally conducive to that sort of simulationist approach, because there is nothing in particular that (i) getting a defensive bonus corresponds to , and (ii) that losing hp corresponds to.
> 
> Eg of (i) - the rules label a red dragon's AC bonus as "natural armour", but it's not clear what - in the fiction - that equates to: given that the best bonus from magical plate armour is only half some of the upper end nautral armour bonuses, it is clear that the "natural" armour of a red dragon can somehow outstrip what even the greatest dwarven artificer can forge, but why? Reading this back into the fiction would be a type of "backwards simulation".



 And I'd say that happens.



> Eg of (ii) - any hit points thread ever will remind us that the rules don't mandate that losing hit points corresponds to any particular sort of occurence in the fiction other than the tautologous "that bit of fighting went against you".



 Yet every hp thread goes there:  hit points are damage, so every hit point is somehow a 'wound' that takes a long time to heal, because, back in the day, healing naturally took a long time.  



pemerton said:


> I don't know what "sword damage" is.



In 1e, 1-8/1-12, in 3e d8(19-20/x2), and, in 3e & 5e, 'slashing.'  

_IRL:  gruesome._


----------



## The Crimson Binome

Sadras said:


> I do not know if this has been mentioned already but a fair amount had to do with presentation and more specifically the presentation of the powers in the PHB (which Hussar has mentioned plenty on these boards) - similar to many PC games (including D&D games, Diablo, WoW, DotA, HoN...etc) when one activates a ability or spell and watching the ability or spell slowly refresh itself.



While I agree with you, and I don't think it's been mentioned yet, there's also a similar similarity to certain card games. In fact, 4E was the first time I'd ever seen anyone print out power cards to keep in their hand for quick reference, and it instantly made me feel like I was playing Magic when I was at the table.

There are other games which go further, and actually tell you to print their powers out as cards, with convenient page formatting and everything. I think there are some that even have complicated rules about drawing and discarding, since they expect you'll have cards anyway, so they really run with the theme. With 4E, though, it definitely feels more like they started from an MMO standpoint, and the fact that it ended up resembling a card-based game was more-or-less a coincidence.


----------



## pemerton

Tony Vargas said:


> I thought you'd said in the past they were 'simulationist?'



"Purist for system" simulationism. That's not the only mode of simulationism that Ron Edwards discusses.



Tony Vargas said:


> But that is something I observe in D&D.  D&D is not a simulation, not even a bad one, it's very abstract, but people do, none-the-less, treat it as if it were.



Agreed, and that was what my examples were about. The purist for system FRGPs were all various sorts of reactions against D&D (RQ, RM, C&S, etc). But 3E adapting some of the tropes of those games, and emulating some aspects of their mechanics in some outposts of resolution (eg grappling, disarming, tripping), has resulted in a conception of D&D play as simulationist play. (Maybe in your experience this predates 3E? I can't rule that out, but I don't think I personally encountered it.)


----------



## pemerton

Shasarak said:


> Damage you take from a sword attack is sword damage.  Damage you take from a fire attack is fire damage.
> 
> What is the difference, are they not just the same miscellaneous damage to hit points?
> 
> Well, no.  If you are a Tiefling with damage resistance to fire then you would be taking less fire damage.  If you wear Adamantine armour you would be taking less damage from swords.
> 
> Therefore the rules *do* mandate that losing hit points must correspond to the particular occurence in the fiction.



And what is the occurrence?

There are no serious injuries (we can tell that from how it heals and how it doesn't impede; plus the magic rules tell us that if anything got chopped off we'd need regenerate, nor cure X wounds, to heal it).

What damage resistance amounts to is more like _When fire is being used, tieflings are able to take it better than ordinary people_ or _If you're wearing adamantine armour, then mundane weaponry is less of a threat to you_.


----------



## Sadras

Tony Vargas said:


> What, there's a vague similarity between D&D and the CRPGs that imitated it? And, it's pretty vague.




As I mentioned in the part of my post you didn't quote - and what Hussar I feel has been right all along, a lot has to do with 4e's presentation. The fact that there were power cards very much blew away any vagueness for many of us.



> Taking a short or long rest seems conceptually distinct from a 'cool down' that just happens.




4e was so precise with its AEDU and refresh rates that many of us saw similarities between the games. This is not attack of the system, but an observation that was identified by some. And this analysis of the system and comparison was encouraged by the different presentation of the PHB. 

To be honest I joined a new group during the 2009 period (as my own was on hiatus for a while). I had not be online or been following the news/style of 4e. When I heard of 4e I went and bought the PHB and to say I was very confused by its look and perhaps disappointed would be an understatement (the art did not help). And I had been playing since 88-89. I'm probably aware my experience might not be common - and others would have done their homework before buying. What made it worse was the group I joined was horrid (for me).

In 2012 I joined Enworld to get a better idea of where the hobby was going.


----------



## pemerton

Sadras said:


> As I mentioned in the part of my post you didn't quote - and what Hussar I feel has been right all along, a lot has to do with 4e's presentation. The fact that there were power cards very much blew away any vagueness for many of us.
> 
> 4e was so precise with its AEDU and refresh rates that many of us saw similarities between the games.



The weird thing about this, for me, is that spell cards, magic item cards, etc, existed for AD&D. And AD&D also had abilities with precise "refresh rates": hit points, spell recovery, lay on hands, etc.


----------



## Imaro

pemerton said:


> The weird thing about this, for me, is that spell cards, magic item cards, etc, existed for AD&D. And AD&D also had abilities with precise "refresh rates": hit points, spell recovery, lay on hands, etc.




The cards were previously for spells and magic items... not class abilities, they weren't part of an official character builder, refresh rates weren't standardized the same across all classes for all powers, previously they weren't necessary for all classes to play the game without constantly referencing the book... and so on.  Each of these factors along with others I haven't mentioned made them both more prevalent in use and gave the mechanics a more artificial/mechanical feel in play for many.  It's like claiming that because there is tablespoon of salt in a dish there shouldn't be any complaints when the cook ups the amount to a cup...


----------



## Sadras

pemerton said:


> The weird thing about this, for me, is that spell cards, magic item cards, etc, existed for AD&D.




Yes true, but the actual PHB (not some D&D gimmick accessories) presented the powers in card blocks. Presentation matters a lot.



> And AD&D also had abilities with precise "refresh rates": hit points, spell recovery, lay on hands, etc.




The AEDU was hard coded into the system for EVERY class.


----------



## billd91

pemerton said:


> The weird thing about this, for me, is that spell cards, magic item cards, etc, existed for AD&D. And AD&D also had abilities with precise "refresh rates": hit points, spell recovery, lay on hands, etc.




Indeed there were some of those things - yet the spell cards and magic cards were used by a fairly small minority of users, in my experience. They were a rarely seen convenience. Daily refresh rates also benefit from being very easy to conceptualize and grasp - those activities apparently tire the wielder out, sleep refreshes. Very easy to see how the abstraction relates to a concept of reality. Plus there's the issue of what contributes to what overbears. I love garlic - I put it in a lot of the things I cook where it enhances the flavor. Yet I don't put it on corn flakes, in my beer, or my ice cream or in absolutely everything I cook because then it would be an overwhelming element. Someone might choose to do so, someone else might avoid it all entirely. I like some resource management, I like particularly types of resource management, I didn't like 4e's structure for powers and found it overbore any fun I got out of the game.

But AEDU refresh rates, of course, weren't the only aspects of the 4e structure that invoked MMORGs to some of us. The way powers were structured and picked up, the way PC roles were reflected by mechanics, they all reminded me of City of Heroes in particular (not WoW which I have almost no experience with). 

You and other 4e fans didn't see the connection - fine. I don't really care that you didn't - but I did. What always galled me (and still does in this thread) was attempts by 4e fans to 'disprove' the connections and connotations I was seeing.


----------



## Jay Verkuilen

Sadras said:


> I do not know if this has been mentioned already but a fair amount had to do with presentation and more specifically the presentation of the powers in the PHB (which Hussar has mentioned plenty on these boards) - similar to many PC games (including D&D games, Diablo, WoW, DotA, HoN...etc) when one activates a ability or spell and watching the ability or spell slowly refresh itself.




As others noted "cooldown" has been around for a long time, but the in your face aspect of it and the explicit shift to more narrative-oriented time definitely shifted things. It's kind of like making a really funky colored ketchup. It might taste the same but it looks bizarre and a lot of appeal comes from the presentation.


----------



## pemerton

Sadras said:


> Yes true, but the actual PHB (not some D&D gimmick accessories) presented the powers in card blocks. Presentation matters a lot.



The 1st ed AD&D had spells presented with "data sections" then descriptions. Adding a bit of colour to that doesn't, to me, seem to make it a card block.



Imaro said:


> refresh rates weren't standardized the same across all classes for all powers, previously they weren't necessary for all classes to play the game without constantly referencing the book





Sadras said:


> The AEDU was hard coded into the system for EVERY class.



Most of this seems to be about how the game handles resource management (which, as far as hp are concerned, had always been a thing for every class). But doesn't seem to me to be particularly evocative of "cool down" rates.

(And in AD&D you had to reference the book for every class if you wanted to look up spells, thief ability chances, or - for fighters in particular - weapon vs armour charts. To the extent that people copied all this down onto their PCs sheets, likewise for 4e PCs.)



Imaro said:


> The cards were previously for spells and magic items... not class abilities



Spells _are_ class abilities!



Imaro said:


> they weren't part of an official character builder



The official character builder wasn't part of the PHB, was it? (I thought that was 3E at launch.) But in any event I'm not sure how that is relevant. Do cards become more MMO-ish if they're in an official character builder rather than an official supplement?



Imaro said:


> Each of these factors along with others I haven't mentioned made them both more prevalent in use and gave the mechanics a more artificial/mechanical feel in play for many.



And this connects to the game being a card game/MMO/CRPG how?

I know that a lot of people complained about the 4e resource recovery framework, because in D&D only spell casters and 3E barbarians have daily recovery abilities. But I don't see how this remotely relates to being an MMO.



billd91 said:


> Daily refresh rates also benefit from being very easy to conceptualize and grasp - those activities apparently tire the wielder out, sleep refreshes. Very easy to see how the abstraction relates to a concept of reality.



But stuff that tires you out a bit less, and takes only a short rest to recover, is not easy to relate to reality? Yet short rests seem to be widely accepted in 5e. So I don't really follow this.



billd91 said:


> I like some resource management, I like particularly types of resource management, I didn't like 4e's structure for powers and found it overbore any fun I got out of the game.



Which is, again, a complaint about a resource management structure.



billd91 said:


> But AEDU refresh rates, of course, weren't the only aspects of the 4e structure that invoked MMORGs to some of us. The way powers were structured and picked up, the way PC roles were reflected by mechanics, they all reminded me of City of Heroes in particular (not WoW which I have almost no experience with).
> 
> You and other 4e fans didn't see the connection - fine. I don't really care that you didn't - but I did. What always galled me (and still does in this thread) was attempts by 4e fans to 'disprove' the connections and connotations I was seeing.



I don't dispute that it reminded you of City of Heroes. It reminded someone else of WOW. It reminded me of HeroWars/Quest (uniform PC build and resolution structures that bind the PC to a cosmological drama about to explode) and Moldvay Basic (simple, crisp effect descriptions which leave most of the adjudication as a table matter rather than being spelled out in needless and constraining detail).

Given the number of people who have tried to "disprove" the resemblance of 4e to Moldvay Basic, I don't think I'm doing too much harm expressing my inability to see any close resemblance to a MMO.



Jay Verkuilen said:


> the explicit shift to more narrative-oriented time



Classic D&D (oiginal D&D, 1st ed AD&D, B/X, maybe even 2nd ed AD&D?) used the notion of a "turn". That is, one unit of party action! In the fiction, it correlates to 10 minutes.

4e replaces thar with the notion of an "encounter". That is, one unit of party drama. In the fiction, it correlates to 5 minutes.

This is one of those things that made me think of Moldvay Basic. I thought MMOs used real seconds of time, not units of in-fiction time given labels that reflect their significance to the activity of gameplay.


----------



## aramis erak

pemerton said:


> So in RM, a roll to hit is literally that - a roll to see if weapon contacts body. There is a chart that reflects different sorts of armour, which encoude the principle (true in the fiction, and at least purportedly grounded ina real-life principle) that heavier armour makes it harder to dodge blows, but will reduce the damage they inflict.
> 
> In RQ a roll to hit is slightly different - it is a roll to see if an attack forces the opponent to parry or dodge to avoid being struck. If the parry or dodge check then fails, the blow _does_ strike. There is then a further mechanical process to determine if armour absorbs/deflects the blow.




Rolemaster uses 10 second combat rounds... and does NOT define a result doing damage as a single hit, either. The term given for damage is "concussion hits" - which implies multiple hits. The combination of time, the ability to shuffle OB into DB, and the term hits being used for damage, all imply it's not one attack=1swing.

Now, GURPS, a roll to hit is in fact a single swing during a 1 second combat round, and the target gets a chance to parry


----------



## Imaro

pemerton said:


> Spells _are_ class abilities!




Yes but until 4e not all classes  cast spells... and yes since you are being purposefully obtuse I'm being just as obtuse in labeling all powers spells in 4e...



pemerton said:


> The official character builder wasn't part of the PHB, was it? (I thought that was 3E at launch.) But in any event I'm not sure how that is relevant. Do cards become more MMO-ish if they're in an official character builder rather than an official supplement?




Why does whether it was part of the PHB matter or not?  When someone created a character sheet with WotC official tool for doing such... it created cards for powers.  



pemerton said:


> And this connects to the game being a card game/MMO/CRPG how?




Because cooldowns mimic the daily/encounter/at-will nature of powers and card games abilities are very precise mechanical bits with a spattering of fiction on them ... just like the powers in 4e.  This was all stated and explained numerous times earlier in the thread.  You may not agree but asking it over and over again won't change the answer.


----------



## Imaro

pemerton said:


> Most of this seems to be about how the game handles resource management (which, as far as hp are concerned, had always been a thing for every class). But doesn't seem to me to be particularly evocative of "cool down" rates.




How is a tiered standardized time frame to regain powers for every class not evocative of a cool down rate in say WoW?  


From WOWpedia

_The term cooldown is defined as a period of wait time before a spell, ability, or item power can be used after a prior spell, ability, or item power. Often referred to by the pseudo-acronym "CD".

'Cooldown' may refer to:

-The period of time after using a spell, ability or item before it can be used again. Many powerful spells and abilities have lengthy cooldowns, encouraging players to exercise forethought in choosing the best moment to use them. Some abilities have no cooldown and can therefore be used as often as desired (provided any other requirements are met).

-The period of time after using almost any spell or ability in which it is not possible to use any other spell or ability. This is known as the global cooldown, and prevents players from using several abilities at once, instead requiring them to be used one at a time (often as part of a 'rotation'). Most abilities cause and are affected by the global cooldown, but some are not - see the list below.

-An ability with a lengthy cooldown; for example, Save your cooldowns for boss fights._


Again it's not that 4e was the only edition who used mechanics reminiscent of cooldowns it was how standardized/rigid and prevalent they now were in every class.


----------



## Flexor the Mighty!

billd91 said:


> But AEDU refresh rates, of course, weren't the only aspects of the 4e structure that invoked MMORGs to some of us. The way powers were structured and picked up, the way PC roles were reflected by mechanics, they all reminded me of City of Heroes in particular (not WoW which I have almost no experience with).
> 
> You and other 4e fans didn't see the connection - fine. I don't really care that you didn't - but I did. What always galled me (and still does in this thread) was attempts by 4e fans to 'disprove' the connections and connotations I was seeing.




Thank you!  City of Heroes/Villains, which is what I was playing back when, was exactly what I thought of when I read 4e and talk of strikers, controllers, tanks, etc.  It was using the exact same terminology as I was getting in that game.  Then reading the powers and such the main thing in my head was this is a MMO on the tabletop.  And it turned me off right away right or wrong.


----------



## billd91

Flexor the Mighty! said:


> Thank you!  City of Heroes/Villains, which is what I was playing back when, was exactly what I thought of when I read 4e and talk of strikers, controllers, tanks, etc.  It was using the exact same terminology as I was getting in that game.  Then reading the powers and such the main thing in my head was this is a MMO on the tabletop.  And it turned me off right away right or wrong.




A friend of mine was dallying with making a tabletop version of City of Heroes back in about 2006 - before 4e published - and I had to do a double-take when 4e came out because of some of the similarities of the powers and roles. If's even funnier looking at the fly power in CoH and flying spells of 4e. Both the 4e wizard and the CoH flyer get what is essentially a Hover power at 6th level (levitate in 4e). True flight doesn't come until 14th level in CoH, 16th in 4e. Group or mass flight comes at level 20 for CoH, 22 for 4e.

So, yeah, 4e gave of a very strong CoH vibe for me.


----------



## Bedrockgames

I haven't played much 5E yet, but I will say the over-emphasis on grids and miniatures were definitely a contributor to me seeking alternatives for D&D style play. I have never been much of a miniature person. But they felt increasingly important and central to the game over from 3E to 4E. So it wouldn't surprise me if this helped draw some people back, and bring some new people in.


----------



## Tony Vargas

pemerton said:


> "Purist for system" simulationism. That's not the only mode of simulationism that Ron Edwards discusses.



 That begs the question, does Mr. Edwards even know what a 'definition' /is/, because he seems wholly unable to construct one, or at least work himself up to the point he's willing to spit one out...

OK, waitaminit: 



> Simulationist: Purists for System: ...FUDGE...BRP...GURPS...the Hero System...d20



 So, basically, core & universal systems, regardless of design philosophy, balance, functionality, or level of complexity?  

...oh, here's a real gem...



> we need to distinguish between Simulationist elements vs. coherent design - the former have certainly been widespread, but mainly in incoherent games, with AD&D and Vampire as the chief examples.



 So, isn't Incoherence like hypocrisy is for a post-modern critic:  the only sin left that can be decried?  
Is it a coincidence that the chief examples of incoherence were representatives of the two most-dominant RPGs of 90s?  D&D and it's challenger at the time, Storyteller?

While, technically, I do have to agree that AD&D and Vampire were both incoherent, I do so only in the natural-language sense.  
In the same sense, so is Mr. Edwards.



> But 3E adapting some of the tropes of those games, and emulating some aspects of their mechanics in some outposts of resolution (eg grappling, disarming, tripping), has resulted in a conception of D&D play as simulationist play. (Maybe in your experience this predates 3E? I can't rule that out, but I don't think I personally encountered it.)



Yes, I've seen the sort of 'reverse simulation' I'm talking about, going, prettymuch, all the way back (to 1980, I suppose).  Seeing it so vigorously put forth as the one true way had to wait for the edition war, though.



pemerton said:


> The weird thing about this, for me, is that spell cards, magic item cards, etc, existed for AD&D. And AD&D also had abilities with precise "refresh rates": hit points, spell recovery, lay on hands, etc..
> 
> And in AD&D you had to reference the book for every class if you wanted to look up spells, thief ability chances, or - for fighters in particular - weapon vs armour charts. To the extent that people copied all this down onto their PCs sheets, likewise for 4e PCs.
> 
> Spells _are_ class abilities!
> 
> The official character builder wasn't part of the PHB, was it? (I thought that was 3E at launch.) But in any event I'm not sure how that is relevant. Do cards become more MMO-ish if they're in an official character builder rather than an official supplement?
> 
> I know that a lot of people complained about the 4e resource recovery framework, because in D&D only spell casters and 3E barbarians have daily recovery abilities.
> 
> But stuff that tires you out a bit less, and takes only a short rest to recover, is not easy to relate to reality? Yet short rests seem to be widely accepted in 5e. So I don't really follow this...
> 
> Classic D&D (oiginal D&D, 1st ed AD&D, B/X, maybe even 2nd ed AD&D?) used the notion of a "turn". That is, one unit of party action! In the fiction, it correlates to 10 minutes.
> 4e replaces thar with the notion of an "encounter". That is, one unit of party drama. In the fiction, it correlates to 5 minutes.



 Yes, there are many parallels to be found, in other editions, to specific things people actually complained about in 4e.  

When someone expresses dissatisfaction with a new version of an old product, and cites things that haven't /really/ changed as 'differences' to justify that dissatisfaction, and insists on changing things back across the board, rather than amending the specific items being complained about, chances are, there's something else that /has/ changed that is at the root of the problem. But, for whatever reason, they don't feel comfortable bringing it up.  Instead, to get back what is actually desired, we must go through this charade of implausible complaints, nostalgia, factual misstatements back-peddled to meaningless subjective claims, recriminations, accusations, name-calling, etc...  all to get the clock rolled back and restore the actual changes, actually at issue, but which are, for whatever reason, unspeakable.

That charade is over, D&D has been restored. 

You can probably work out for yourself what changed, and changed back, and thus what it was really all about, for yourself, without poking anyone on the internet anymore.  You've obviously got 4e down, you just need to parse 5e's natural language (good luck with that) for the things it changed /back/.


----------



## Lanefan

pemerton said:


> (And in AD&D you had to reference the book for every class if you wanted to look up spells, thief ability chances, or - for fighters in particular - weapon vs armour charts. To the extent that people copied all this down onto their PCs sheets, likewise for 4e PCs.)



Ditto for feats etc. in 3e / 5e.

In all versions of the game you were kind of expected, as part of being a useful player, to note your character's abilities on its character sheet...with one exception: a typical spellcaster would soon enough have enough spells, some with quite lengthy write-ups, to force you to have handy the book(s) containing those write-ups.

More recently, it's now possible to put the spells online so everyone at the table can look 'em up all at once without having to argue over who gets the book next: a vast improvement!

As for fighters, remember in 1e you'd only be proficient with 4 or 5 individual weapons, gaining another every so many levels; so writing out the space-speed-etc. details for each proficient weapon wasn't as big a headache as you might think.



> Spells _are_ class abilities!



Er...no.  Spellcasting is a class ability: the ability to cast (arcane or divine, by class) spells.



> I know that a lot of people complained about the 4e resource recovery framework, because in D&D only spell casters and 3E barbarians have daily recovery abilities. But I don't see how this remotely relates to being an MMO.



For my part, the argument I had wasn't the dailies but the "encounter" reset; mostly because trying to define exactly what constituted an encounter would in many instances be like trying to nail a cloud to a tree.  If they wanted a short duration for stuff then they should have given it an actual duration, measured in actual game-based units of time like rounds or minutes...



> Classic D&D (oiginal D&D, 1st ed AD&D, B/X, maybe even 2nd ed AD&D?) used the notion of a "turn". That is, one unit of party action! In the fiction, it correlates to 10 minutes.



 ...or turns... (which I've always thought are a needless complication just for the sake of complication - if something takes ten minutes I'm quite capable of saying it takes ten minutes)



> 4e replaces thar with the notion of an "encounter". That is, one unit of party drama. In the fiction, it correlates to 5 minutes.



 ...or drama units, of which it seems there's two to a turn.

"Sorry, your drama quota has been exceeded: you must wait 143 seconds before attempting further drama."



> But stuff that tires you out a bit less, and takes only a short rest to recover, is not easy to relate to reality? Yet short rests seem to be widely accepted in 5e.



Given the number of complaints I see about 'em on these boards, I'll not be quite so quick to leap to this conclusion...

Lan-"now wondering if there's a way to implement 'drama units' as a measure of time in my game"-efan


----------



## Shasarak

pemerton said:


> And what is the occurrence?
> 
> There are no serious injuries (we can tell that from how it heals and how it doesn't impede; plus the magic rules tell us that if anything got chopped off we'd need regenerate, nor cure X wounds, to heal it).
> 
> What damage resistance amounts to is more like _When fire is being used, tieflings are able to take it better than ordinary people_ or _If you're wearing adamantine armour, then mundane weaponry is less of a threat to you_.




I guess you are right that the game has changed with the new Video Gamer mentality so that you no longer have any serious injuries.  In ADnD however that was not the case and if you were knocked into negative hps you required weeks to recover.

So yes if 5e is your basis of looking at HPs, AC etc I can see how you may get the impression that they correspond to nothing in particular.


----------



## pemerton

aramis erak said:


> Rolemaster uses 10 second combat rounds... and does NOT define a result doing damage as a single hit, either. The term given for damage is "concussion hits" - which implies multiple hits. The combination of time, the ability to shuffle OB into DB, and the term hits being used for damage, all imply it's not one attack=1swing.



RM combat is ambiguous in some respects. The 10-second rounds, together with the parry mechanics, suggest a round of jostling for advantage just as Gygax (in his DMG) described for 1-minute AD&D rounds.

But other features of the system - the crit results, the Bladeturn spell - suggest that what is being deleivered, or defended against - is one particular blow.

And in any event, where there is no ambiguity is in the fact that _suffering a loss in combat_ - that is, being "hit" - corresponds to a clear state of affairs in the fiction, namely, taking some definite injury (blood loss, brusing, and other physical trauma).

This feature of RM is also relevant to the discussion about "cooldowns", MMOs etc.

There are three main components that contribute to the basic appeal of the "process sim"/"purist for system" FRPGs like RM, RQ, etc. They are summed up in the slogan "Get Real, Get Rolemaster!"

One of those components is the one I was just discussing - in place of an AC/hp method of resolving hand-to-hand combat, they have a parry-and-injury based system, with armour providing some form of damage reduction (literally in RQ; in RM, via its place on the weapon charts and its role in resolving various crit resuts). This can cause issues for gameplay, given the tendency for combat to be a central feature of FRPGing (ie the reasons Gygax gave in his DMG for favouring a hp approach aren't silly one), but it nevertheless is a key element in the appeal of RM, RQ etc.

A second component is the replacement of class-based PC build with "open" PC building: fully open in RQ, while RM still uses "classes" but as devices for establishing the points cost for particular abilities. This non-class-based approach to PC building brings with it generic skill lists, and the inclusion of combat ability and (moreso in RM than RQ) magic ability as just another skill to be developed. This is a complete rejection of blanket rules like "wizards can't use swords or armour" and "only thieves can pick pockets".

The third component is the replacement of D&D's "Vancian" spell system with points-based casting (RM takes this further than RQ). Playing a spell caster no longer involves assembling a "hand" of resources which must be managed over the course of an episode of play.

What is striking to me is that the respects in which 4e is called out as "being like an MMO" are all respects in which it utterly repudiates the RM/RQ approach and instead doubles down on the alternative D&D approach. So we have no injury system; instead we build on the hp system by adding in a healing surge mechanic that further reduces the long-term consequences of hit point loss and turns them primarily into an encounter resource rather than an "expedition" resource.

We have no spell point system but instead keep the "hand of resources" model and generalise it across all classes. And, as with hp, make the encounter rather than the expedition the focus for managing those resources.

And so far from having "open" PC-build, the importance of class to PC building is reinforced, with each class having its own mostly unique set of abilities (powers, feats, etc) that favour the creation of recognisable archetypes, or - if one prefers - game pieces with clearly distinguished roles to perform. (Much like Gygax's apparent vision for character classes in his PHB and DMG.)

This is why I find that particular line of attack on 4e _from D&D players_ so weird. It would make sense coming from players of RM, RQ or similar games, because it is a reinforcement of all the core elements of D&D that those systems are built on recting.

Whereas I can't make sense of D&D players posting as if D&D _already answered to the concerns of "purist for system" RPGing_ up until 4e was published. Maybe this has some connection to [MENTION=996]Tony Vargas[/MENTION]'s idea of "backwards simulation".

(There is one fearure of RM that is very close to 4e martial encounter powers: Adrenal Moves, especially in conjunction with rules for sustaining them, which I thin may frist have been in RMC IV. I remember discussing these as a precedent for martial encounter powers on ENworld back in 2008.)


----------



## Tony Vargas

Lanefan said:


> Er...no.  Spellcasting is a class ability: the ability to cast (arcane or divine, by class) spells.



 Distinction w/o a difference.  A caster is his spells.



> For my part, the argument I had wasn't the dailies but the "encounter" reset; mostly because trying to define exactly what constituted an encounter would in many instances be like trying to nail a cloud to a tree.



 Combat Encounters conceptually go from surprise or the rolling of initiative until one side is vanquished or contact broken...

Encounter powers were recovered on a short rest, of 5 min.  

Effects that weren't sustained, save ends, or end-of-next-turn, were typically to the end of the encounter, or, again, 5 min.  

5 minutes is not an unfamiliar, unintuitive, or complicated period of time.


----------



## Jhaelen

Sadras said:


> As I mentioned in the part of my post you didn't quote - and what Hussar I feel has been right all along, a lot has to do with 4e's presentation. The fact that there were power cards very much blew away any vagueness for many of us.



Do you feel that FFG's Star Wars RPG was inspired by CCG's, as well?


----------



## Sadras

Jhaelen said:


> Do you feel that FFG's Star Wars RPG was inspired by CCG's, as well?




Sorry, I cannot comment because I have never played or looked at the FFG's Star Wars RPG. It is probably blasphemous to say this on these boards (not going to make any friends), but I was never interested in playing a Star Wars RPG - thematically the fantasy space opera never appealed to me. I prefer the harder sci-fi settings.


----------



## Lanefan

Tony Vargas said:


> Distinction w/o a difference.  A caster is his spells.



A caster who for whatever reason knows no spells at the moment (e.g. has run out for the day) still has the 'spellcasting' ability.



> Combat Encounters conceptually go from surprise or the rolling of initiative until one side is vanquished or contact brokem..
> 
> Encounter powers were recovered on a short rest, of 5 min.
> 
> Effects that weren't sustained, save ends, or end-of-next-turn, were typically to the end of the encounter, or, again, 5 min.
> 
> 5 minutes is not an unfamiliar, unintuitive, or complicated period of time.



I don't remember seeing the 5-minute qualifier anywhere for duration - was that in a later DMG? (I only got the first one)  If that had been there all along I'd have just been saying "make everything 5 minutes and have done with it" and not arguing nearly as much, but as that never came up I suspect it wasn't in 4e's DMG1.

The 5-minute rest to reload I vaguely remember, but did I only hear about that here?

I remember when 4e came out and this same topic arose on these boards, I put forward four or five reasonably-common situations* in which it would be difficult to clearly tell where a combat encounter began/ended; and about the best answer I got amounted to "wing it".

* - some of these were, in brief and to the best of my recall:

- PCs are laying an ambush for a known and visible group of approaching foes who aren't quite here yet and want to use E-abilities before the ambush as well as during it, can they?
- one or more PCs get separated from the party during a combat and can no longer interact with it even though it is still ongoing; do their E-abilities run out before the other PCs' do?
- a normal combat is just winding down when the next (unrelated) set of foes shows up, do E-powers sustain even though it's not the same battle any more?

And there were others.  Simply saying "5 minutes, no matter what" would solve all these...and as a side effect would, if desired, allow these abilities to be used in other non-encounter situations.

Lanefan


----------



## pemerton

Lanefan said:


> the argument I had wasn't the dailies but the "encounter" reset; mostly because trying to define exactly what constituted an encounter would in many instances be like trying to nail a cloud to a tree.  If they wanted a short duration for stuff then they should have given it an actual duration, measured in actual game-based units of time like rounds or minutes



I gather you're not familiar with the following passages from the PHB (p 15, under the heading "Attack Powers and Utility Powers"; and p 278, under the heading "Durations"):

You can use *encounter *powers many times during a day of adventuring, but you have to rest a few minutes between each use, so you can use them each once per encounter.

_Until the End of the Encounter_: The effect ends when you take a rest (short or extended) or after 5 minutes.​
Page 263 also tells us that "A short rest is about 5 minutes long", and renews encounter powers.

It's not that uncertain.


----------



## Tony Vargas

Lanefan said:


> I don't remember seeing the 5-minute qualifier anywhere for duration - was that in a later DMG? (I only got the first one)  If that had been there all along I'd have just been saying "make everything 5 minutes and have done with it" and not arguing nearly as much, but as that never came up I suspect it wasn't in 4e's DMG1.



  Since you're curious about the early state of the game, PH p278, under, of all things, 'Durations, ' 

"The effect ends when you take a rest (short or extended) or after 5 minutes."

So, yes, it was there from the beginning.



> The 5-minute rest to reload I vaguely remember, but did I only hear about that here?



 Amazingly, resting also has an entry, helpfully under that heading, PH, p263, "A short rest is about 5 minutes long."

(Yeah, 'about,' still flirt'n with 'natural language's back then.)



> I remember when 4e came out and this same topic arose on these boards, I put forward four or five reasonably-common situations* in which it would be difficult to clearly tell where a combat encounter began/ended; and about the best answer I got amounted to "wing it".



 That's the _best_ answer to just about any 5e question, today.  

(That's a DM Empowerment plug, folks.)



> PCs are laying an ambush for a known and visible group of approaching foes who aren't quite here yet and want to use E-abilities before the ambush as well as during it, can they?



 You could use an encounter power out of combat.  Mostly, it'd be pointless to do so, in the situation you describe, since they don't tend to have sustain or end of encounter durations, and it would take a 5min short rest to recover them. 

You could certainly use a daily power with a sustain or end of encounter duration, but if the enemy dawdled for more than 5 minutes, it'd've been wasted.



> one or more PCs get separated from the party during a combat and can no longer interact with it even though it is still ongoing; do their E-abilities run out before the other PCs' do?



 If they start a rest before the others do, sure.  



> a normal combat is just winding down when the next (unrelated) set of foes shows up, do E-powers sustain even though it's not the same battle any more?



 Adding foes to an encounter is likely to extend the encounter.  It seems unlikely it'd ever get to 50 rounds and run up against the 5 min limit, though.

There's also a discussion on when encounters end in the DMG1, p41.

In retrospect, cracking the PH I haven't needed to consult in years, the rules are starkly clear.  Or maybe its contrast from running 5e. 

Maybe the source of confusion was from folks offering speculation or not checking the book while still unfamiliar, or maybe it was jumping to interpretations and parsing tangential entries for implications as we were used to doing in 3e, rather than just finding and accepting a simple,  one-sentence rule under a bold, relevant, heading?


----------



## Manbearcat

Saelorn said:


> While I agree with you, and I don't think it's been mentioned yet, there's also a similar similarity to certain card games. In fact, 4E was the first time I'd ever seen anyone print out power cards to keep in their hand for quick reference, and it instantly made me feel like I was playing Magic when I was at the table.




Saelorn,

This is a little weird.  I brought this up in significant detail.  My post regarding 4e and MtG was actually the genesis to this conversation angle.  You either responded to that post directly or responded/XPed posts that were in response to it.



Shasarak said:


> I think that it is quite interesting that two people can look at the same data and not only draw the opposite conclusions but also accuse the other of being disingenuous.




Its not that interesting...



> Me
> edition warriors who had contempt for one or both games and were ignorant of one or both paradigms because it could be easily weaponized to call 4e shallow and get like-minded ignorant and angry edition warriors to disingenuously repeat the meme.




...that you misconstrued or mischaracterized what I wrote.  I didn't accuse Saelorn (or anyone else I've been conversing with) of being disingenuous.   Yes, I did lay out the factually correct information that he was confused over (thereby revealing ignorance of continuity and paradigm), but I didn't remotely question his integrity.



Shasarak said:


> I guess you are right that the game has changed with *the new Video Gamer mentality *so that you no longer have any serious injuries.  In ADnD however that was not the case and if you were knocked into negative hps you required weeks to recover.
> 
> So yes if 5e is your basis of looking at HPs, AC etc I can see how you may get the impression that they correspond to nothing in particular.




Now this is indeed interesting.

Two of the major rubbish edition warrior attacks against the 4th edition of D&D and the players who liked it were invoking things like:

a)  "the new Video Gamer mentality" as an epithet.

b)  "tactical skirmish boardgame linked by freeform roleplay" as an epithet

(A) was the angle that certain folks used to decry other folks (and a perceived attendant gaming paradigm) that were/was said to standardize "entitlement", "munchkinism", and/or "ezmode" 

(B) was about shallowness in gameplay where there is no "relevant fiction"; eg components of a shared imaginary space become irrelevant to action resolution and therefore the trajectory of play.

So...like I said earlier; "weaponized" for edition warring.  Thanks for the apropos example.


----------



## Shasarak

Manbearcat said:


> Its not that interesting...




I can see how you can come to that conclusion.  And on the other hand you have someone presenting all the different powers and their cool down times in intricate detail and then concluding that is why those WoW powers are not at all the same as those in 4e.

Well of course they are not exactly the same; one is a computer game and the other is a RPG.  Can you imagine if an RPG had powers that cooled down in real time, that would be crazy.



> ...that you misconstrued or mischaracterized what I wrote.  I didn't accuse Saelorn (or anyone else I've been conversing with) of being disingenuous.   Yes, I did lay out the factually correct information that he was confused over (thereby revealing ignorance of continuity and paradigm), but I didn't remotely question his integrity.




No one ever claimed that you did question Saelorns integrity.  



> Now this is indeed interesting.
> 
> Two of the major rubbish edition warrior attacks against the 4th edition of D&D and the players who liked it were invoking things like:
> 
> a)  "the new Video Gamer mentality" as an epithet.




As you yourself have proven in detail, it is not a rubbish edition warrior attack to point out a fact that no one can dispute.  I mean you have the designers themselves saying that they drew on video games as inspiration for their work on 4e.  



> b)  "tactical skirmish boardgame linked by freeform roleplay" as an epithet
> 
> (A) was the angle that certain folks used to decry other folks (and a perceived attendant gaming paradigm) that were/was said to standardize "entitlement", "munchkinism", and/or "ezmode"
> 
> (B) was about shallowness in gameplay where there is no "relevant fiction"; eg components of a shared imaginary space become irrelevant to action resolution and therefore the trajectory of play.
> 
> So...like I said earlier; "weaponized" for edition warring.  Thanks for the apropos example.




I must admit that the only people that apparently seem to have a belief that things like Stats, HP, AC etc correspond to nothing in particular are 4e players where in fact the stats of a Creature have more to do with their level then any other intrinsic factor.


----------



## Flexor the Mighty!

4e fans often get upset when its referred to as a skirmish miniatures game you can tack role playing on when that is how I've had it described to me by fans of the game in the past and reading the books didn't make me go "those guys were clueless!"


----------



## pemerton

Flexor the Mighty! said:


> 4e fans often get upset when its referred to as a skirmish miniatures game you can tack role playing on when that is how I've had it described to me by fans of the game in the past and reading the books didn't make me go "those guys were clueless!"



Just to be clear, then: you _do_ think that 4e is a tactical skrimish game with RP tacked on?



Shasarak said:


> I guess you are right that the game has changed with the new Video Gamer mentality so that you no longer have any serious injuries. In ADnD however that was not the case and if you were knocked into negative hps you required weeks to recover.



In Gygax's DMG, recovery from negative hit points takes 1 week of rest (DMG p 82):

Any character brought to 0 (or fewer) hit points and then revived will
remain in a corna far 1-6 turns. Thereafter, he or she must rest for a full
week, minimum. He or she will be incapable of any activity other than that
necessary to move slowly to a place of rest and eat and sleep when there.
The character cannot attack, defend, cast spells, use magic devices, carry
burdens, run, study, research, or do anything else. This is true even if cure
spells and/or healing potions are given to him or her, although if a heal
spell is bestowed the prohibition no longer applies.

If any creature reaches a state of -6 or greater negative paints before
being revived, this could indicate scarring or the loss of some member, if
you so choose.​
So you're saying that, in the world of AD&D, no one takes injuries from swords except thost which kill them, and those which render them unconcsious but able to recover (perhaps with a scar or maiming) with 1 week of rest? No one ever has a shield arm broken by a mace? Or a finger cut off by a sword? (Neither of which is apt to knock someone unconscious.)

Hence the slogan, "Get real, get Rolemaster!"


----------



## pemerton

Lanefan said:


> A caster who for whatever reason knows no spells at the moment (e.g. has run out for the day) still has the 'spellcasting' ability.



Seriously? In that case encounter powers aren't class abilities either, because a character who has used all his/her encounter powers and has not had a chance to rest has only the ability to regain them, but not to use any.


----------



## The Crimson Binome

Manbearcat said:


> This is a little weird.  I brought this up in significant detail.  My post regarding 4e and MtG was actually the genesis to this conversation angle.  You either responded to that post directly or responded/XPed posts that were in response to it.



There are a lot of conversations going on right now. I may have lost track of who said what, exactly.

I'll just say that there's evidence for both sides, so while I'm still a firm believer in the MMO theory, I can see why someone might follow the MtG theory. It's far from a baseless accusation.


----------



## Les Moore

Ath-kethin said:


> Dunno if removing miniatures saved D&D. It definitely saved/resurrected my interest in the game, though.




The whole point of D&D is creative imagination and abstract thought. Dice, maps, miniatures, are all aids to the process, in many 
instances, but not really neccessary. In our campaigns, we use glass beads for monsters, objects, and other important features,
when needed.

IMO, 4E's big fail was removing all character uniqueness, by assigning cookie-cutter specs to a specific miniature. I'm no fan of
5E, either, but it's a resurgence of the character building which has been at the core of the game, since the beginning.


----------



## Tony Vargas

Les Moore said:


> IMO, 4E's big fail was removing all character uniqueness, by assigning cookie-cutter specs to a specific miniature.



 That's abject nonsense.  

And, I don't mean in the "regurgitating edition war bile, because you mentioned 4e" sense. Though, obviously, there's suddenly a lot of that in this thread.

No, I mean in the "colorless green illusions sleep furiously" sense.  It's as if you've taken semi-random words and phrases from similar discussions and assembled them into a grammatically passable informal English sentence, without regard for context or individual meaning.




> I'm no fan of 5E, either, but it's a resurgence of the character building which has been at the core of the game, since the beginning.



 Not much better, but at least it rises to the level of simply flat-out wrong.  5e, thanks to its sane pace of release, has less character-building customization depth of options than 4e (& less balanced, FWIW), 3e (far less!), or 2e (though arguably better options than 2e).  
And character-building was rudimentary until 2e, anyway.  Random stats, race, pick a class you qualified for... not much beyond that, and little of it under the player's control.

The huge thing that 5e has returned to that was a hallmark of the classic (0D&D, AD&D, BECMI) TSR game, that the prior WotC eds (3.x, 4e, Essentials) had taken a 180 from, is now called DM Empowerment (It wasn't called anything, then, because player entitlement hadn't become a thing).

That's nothing much to do with using minis, which D&D always has (since before it was D&D!), nor with running 'TotM,' which has always been possible in D&D, as well, (even if made challenging by the need to establish relative positioning and intersections among 20' radius & 60-degree cone &c area effects and the like).


----------



## Manbearcat

Flexor the Mighty! said:


> 4e fans often get upset when its referred to as a skirmish miniatures game you can tack role playing on when that is how I've had it described to me by fans of the game in the past and reading the books didn't make me go "those guys were clueless!"




I would love to know who those fans are.  Back when I first started posting here 6 years ago, there were dozens and dozens and dozens of legitimately active (in terms of posting habits) 4e players on these boards.  Now, the bulk of those participants have (very unfortunately as most of them had very interesting things to say) gone elsewhere or just stopped posting altogether.  

RPG.Net has a hugely active 4e community.

Something Awful is the same.

Never have I seen an actual 4e advocate, here or in any of those places, describe the game in ignorant and vanilla edition-warrior language (the language of someone who doesn't understand and hates the game) such as "a skirmish miniatures game you can tack role playing on."  Never.  Not once.

Never.  

Perhaps you're confusing what you have read?  Perhaps what you have read is a nuanced discussion where someone (who actually likes 4e) said something to the effect of:

a)  4e's character niches are tightly focused and transparently engineered (and then communicated in the text) toward playing a classic role in D&D; protect my allies, support my allies, kill the bad guys, control the battlefield/dictate the terms of engagement.  In that way, the coherent design is more like you'll find in a well-built MMO than in any other edition in history.

or

b)  The exciting tactical overhead and interesting decision-points for players (both on-turn and off-turn) in 4e combats remind me less of classic D&D and more of an action-adventure CRPG.

or 

c)  The conflict-charged, tightly-focused "world on fire" premise and thematic setting components/cosmology of 4e reminds me more of Diablo or God of War than Forgotten Realms.

Those are things a 4e advocate (who actually likes the game) may say to describe the game (with reference to video games).  

Here is another way that a 4e advocate who has played a lot of indie games and card games like MtG (therefore they understand how all 3 work) might also say something like:

"Wow, Magic's Control decks are about (1) action denial, (2) creature-sweeping, and (3) rearranging/dictating the terms of engagement/field of play (via things like scrying or moving cards in and out of hands, around in the deck, in/out of the graveyard)...ha, its almost like the 4e designers cribbed that directly from WotC's main property...or those Magic guys were consulted!"

or

"Wow, 4e is all about the conflict-charged scene (the encounter) rather than serial exploration...that is just like so many indie games!"

Here is how a 4e advocate who has played athletics at a high level and been involved in martial arts much of their life might describe the 4e Fighter:

"Wow, the active and passive melee control features of the 4e Fighter are so immersive.  They harken deeply to the kind of profound and intense catch 22 play that you live every moment when rolling on the mat with a jujitsu player that is either as dangerous or more dangerous than you.  They also remind me of checking someone in hockey or basketball where you're always trying to dictate the terms by taking something away but giving something up that is a baited trap/less than ideal option for the guy you are either manning up against or who has come into the zone you're defending.  Brilliantly conceived!

Not something to the effect of "4e is basically not a roleplaying game."  That is precisely the kind of nonsense that such a person would have been pushing back against for years by people who utterly hated the game and endlessly disrupted interesting conversations by pushing that line either explicitly or implicitly (hence making actual functional and enjoyable conversation all but impossible).


----------



## Umbran

Folks, I know some of you have strong feelings.  But if you treat each other like edition-warring is still a thing, you will find yourself on vacation.  Patience will be very thin for shenanigans on this.


----------



## Flexor the Mighty!

Manbearcat said:


> I would love to know who those fans are.




People I talked to at game stores back in the end of the 4e era.  Sorry if I can't give you phone numbers.


----------



## Flexor the Mighty!

pemerton said:


> Just to be clear, then: you _do_ think that 4e is a tactical skrimish game with RP tacked on?




I think it moved too far in that direction for my tastes but it didn't hit the Frostgrave territory to be sure.


----------



## Lanefan

Lanefan said:
			
		

> A caster who for whatever reason knows no spells at the moment (e.g. has run out for the day) still has the 'spellcasting' ability.





pemerton said:


> Seriously? In that case encounter powers aren't class abilities either, because a character who has used all his/her encounter powers and has not had a chance to rest has only the ability to regain them, but not to use any.



Sigh.

A wizard or magic-user always has 'spellcasting' as a class ability, as opposed to a fighter who does not.  A ranger always (or should always!) has 'tracking' as a class ability even if she's currently blind, deaf, and tied up in a cave somewhere; as opposed to wizards who never get tracking as a class ability.

Having an ability as a class feature and whether you can actually use that ability right this minute are two completely different things; which is also true for encounter abilities.



			
				pemerton said:
			
		

> In Gygax's DMG, recovery from negative hit points takes 1 week of rest (DMG p 82):
> 
> Any character brought to 0 (or fewer) hit points and then revived will
> remain in a corna far 1-6 turns. Thereafter, he or she must rest for a full
> week, minimum. He or she will be incapable of any activity other than that
> necessary to move slowly to a place of rest and eat and sleep when there.
> The character cannot attack, defend, cast spells, use magic devices, carry
> burdens, run, study, research, or do anything else. This is true even if cure
> spells and/or healing potions are given to him or her, although if a heal
> spell is bestowed the prohibition no longer applies.
> 
> If any creature reaches a state of -6 or greater negative paints before
> being revived, this could indicate scarring or the loss of some member, if
> you so choose.
> 
> So you're saying that, in the world of AD&D, no one takes injuries from swords except thost which kill them, and those which render them unconcsious but able to recover (perhaps with a scar or maiming) with 1 week of rest? No one ever has a shield arm broken by a mace? Or a finger cut off by a sword? (Neither of which is apt to knock someone unconscious.)



Though not perfect as written, as you note, you still have to admit it's quantum leaps more realistic than the 4e-5e model in which you can get the livin' tar beat out of you (i.e. go to 0-and-unconscious and get stood up each time before dying) several times during a given day and wake up in perfect condition the following mornng after an overnight rest.

Lanefan


----------



## Manbearcat

Flexor the Mighty! said:


> People I talked to at game stores back in the end of the 4e era.  Sorry if I can't give you phone numbers.




Those guys at your stores at the end of the 4e era?  Man, I wish you would have mentioned that it was those guys.  That would have saved me a lot of writing.

I talked to those guys at your stores right after you talked to them.  They all were just pulling your leg.  It was a troll-job.  They wanted to see if 6 years later you would use the (faked) testimony of some dudes at game stores at the end of the 4e era as evidence for a conversation on an internet forum!  

Now that you're convinced and that is settled, lets cycle back to something I posted earlier in the thread that didn't get any traction.  Hopefully that can spark some actual interesting conversation.



Manbearcat said:


> Quote Originally Posted by pemerton  View Post
> @Manbearcat, another curious thing about responses to 4e is this idea of "DM-proofing". There's a very strong ethos, I think, among D&D players that the GM's job includes deciding outcomes. Which also underpins at least some of the discussion about TotM vs minis/grids.
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> Absolutely.  Or at the very list, there is a very strong ethos among many D&D players that the GM's job (as lead storyteller) is primarily about curating play generally (and in some cases very specifically) with the abstract/broad play agenda of what (the GM thinks) makes the best story and entails (what the GM thinks is) the most fun.  Its this overly broad/subjective agenda and the extreme discretion/latitude afforded by "the lead storyteller" (coupled with a certain approach to/design of resolution mechanics) that creates a stark contrast with a game like Dungeon World (where agenda/principles/resolution mechanics are hyper-focused/transparent and GM discretion/latitude is very constrained by comparison).
> 
> And yes, that coincides nicely with TotM vs minis/grids.  When you have combat resolution machinery that is as intensive as D&D (action economy, ranges, durations, spatial relationships all interfacing EXTREMELY intimately and therefore player-decision-points become enormously dependent upon the parsing of such variables and their inter-connectivity), removing the concreteness moves the spectrum of agency in combat-related decision-points from player overhead to GM discretion.
> 
> I don't see how that could be argued differently.  It can certainly be argued that it makes for a better game because other consideration a, b, or c, but the above remains intact.
Click to expand...



So Dungeon World is several orders rules-lite-er than any brand of D&D.  No Initiative, or combat rounds, and spatial relationships/ranges for interaction/attack are just fictional descriptors (actual natural language; eg "whites of their eyes", "shouting distance", "hand's reach and no further") rather than numerical units that interface spatially with other units (that also have numerical units to measure things like speed, range, etc).  Yet, even when I'm running Dungeon World I'm still using a hand-drawn map to represent where creatures are with respect to each other and with respect to battlefield obstacles/terrain.

Why is that?

If a player declares an action/makes a move, I want to make sure that they know (and I know) precisely:

1)  what may impede their capacity to do so without having the fiction change dynamically (either positively or adversely) before that move can fully materialize...

and/or 

2)  whether or not there is one or more obstacles in the way that might require a Defy Danger (the DW equivalent of a D&D saving throw) in order to get to the point where the fictional trigger for their declared move will occur (thereby allowing them to make their playbook/world move).

This affords them optimal agency within the parameters of the system and within the fiction.  Otherwise, I would have to fiat away all the mechanical interactions with either a hand-wavey "yes" or (potentially perceived as) an adversarial "no".  Even in a rules-lite system like DW, my agency as GM would be importing a heftier signal than I would have otherwise if the player would have been able to navigate those spatial relationships beforehand by referencing even a roughly scrawled map-as-proxy (with spatial relationships/Tags).


----------



## Flexor the Mighty!

Manbearcat said:


> Those guys at your stores at the end of the 4e era?  Man, I wish you would have mentioned that it was those guys.  That would have saved me a lot of writing.
> 
> I talked to those guys at your stores right after you talked to them.  They all were just pulling your leg.  It was a troll-job.  They wanted to see if 6 years later you would use the (faked) testimony of some dudes at game stores at the end of the 4e era as evidence for a conversation on an internet forum!
> 
> Now that you're convinced and that is settled, lets cycle back to something I posted earlier in the thread that didn't get any traction.  Hopefully that can spark some actual interesting conversation.




The only thing I'm convinced of is that this is a waste of time.  Enjoy your game.


----------



## Tony Vargas

Manbearcat said:


> Man, I wish you would have mentioned that it was those guys.  That would have saved me a lot of writing.



 Small world, i'n'it?



> Dungeon World is several orders rules-lite-er than any brand of D&D.  No Initiative, or combat rounds, and spatial relationships/ranges for interaction/attack are just fictional descriptors (actual natural language; eg "whites of their eyes", "shouting distance", "hand's reach and no further")



 Sounds perfect for TotM.



> Yet, even when I'm running Dungeon World I'm still using a hand-drawn map to represent where creatures are with respect to each other and with respect to battlefield obstacles/terrain.
> 
> Why is that?



 The cartographers guild knows where you live?  _Those guys_ bet you couldn't do It?  As a quiet homage to JRR Tolkien?



> If a player declares an action/makes a move, I want to make sure that they know (and I know) precisely:
> 
> 1)  what may impede their capacity to do so
> and/or
> 2)  whether.. that might require a  (the DW equivalent of a D&D saving throw)
> 
> This affords them optimal agency within the parameters of the system and within the fiction




...oh, that's reasonable.



> Otherwise, I would have to fiat away all the mechanical interactions with either a hand-wavey "yes" or (potentially perceived as) an adversarial "no".  Even in a rules-lite system like DW, my agency as GM would be importing a heftier signal than I would have otherwise if the player would have been able to navigate those spatial relationships beforehand by referencing even a roughly scrawled map-as-proxy (with spatial relationships/Tags).



 Thats an interesting point. I was thinking that 5e's lip service to TotM was 'orthogonal' to its DM Empowerment goal, but, you've pointed out that it's at least tangential, in that it does present more need for DM judgement, even if the system is rules-light & supports it, let alone in 5e, where frequent rulings would be called for, as well.

I'm so used to running games, even wildly hex-dependent Champions!, in that mode that I'd not given that factor much thought ( or maybe I had, & forgot... heck we may have had this discussion here before...)


----------



## pemerton

Lanefan said:


> Sigh.
> 
> A wizard or magic-user always has 'spellcasting' as a class ability, as opposed to a fighter who does not.  A ranger always (or should always!) has 'tracking' as a class ability even if she's currently blind, deaf, and tied up in a cave somewhere; as opposed to wizards who never get tracking as a class ability.
> 
> Having an ability as a class feature and whether you can actually use that ability right this minute are two completely different things; which is also true for encounter abilities.
> 
> Though not perfect as written, as you note, you still have to admit it's quantum leaps more realistic than the 4e-5e model in which you can get the livin' tar beat out of you (i.e. go to 0-and-unconscious and get stood up each time before dying) several times during a given day and wake up in perfect condition the following mornng after an overnight rest.



(1) It's not "more reallistic". It's different, but it's not realistic.

(2) What makes you think a 4e PC who swoons in combat, and then recovers to fight on, has "had the livin' tar beaten out of him/her"? Maybe you're into nonsense narration, but I'm not.

Also, have you worked out yet what _encounter_ means as a duration in 4e?


----------



## pemerton

Tony Vargas said:


> I was thinking that 5e's lip service to TotM was 'orthogonal' to its DM Empowerment goal, but, you've pointed out that it's at least tangential, in that it does present more need for DM judgement



I made this point somewhere upthread:



pemerton said:


> [MENTION=6696971]Manbearcat[/MENTION], another curious thing about responses to 4e is this idea of "DM-proofing". There's a very strong ethos, I think, among D&D players that the GM's job includes deciding outcomes. Which also underpins at least some of the discussion about TotM vs minis/grids.


----------



## billd91

pemerton said:


> (1) It's not "more reallistic". It's different, but it's not realistic.




On a continuum between realistic and not realistic - the older school version is definitely a number of steps closer to the realistic end than the 4e/5e version. It's still far from it, but that doesn't mean you can't compare their relative position on that scale. This isn't just "different", this is different in a particular way that offers a bit more of a nod to the necessities of time (and having to get out of a hazardous environment altogether) in order to recover from a serious beatdown.


----------



## Shasarak

Lanefan said:


> Though not perfect as written, as you note, you still have to admit it's quantum leaps more realistic than the 4e-5e model in which you can get the livin' tar beat out of you (i.e. go to 0-and-unconscious and get stood up each time before dying) several times during a given day and wake up in perfect condition the following mornng after an overnight rest.
> 
> Lanefan




Maybe the reason that Ruin Quest is doing so well is that you can get your leg broken and your hand chopped off when fighting a bunch of mooks. :shrug:


----------



## cmad1977

I dunno if it saves D&D. I know that the lack of slavish adherence to a grid brought my entire group back to gaming and created new player too. 

Instead of looking down at a bunch of minis counting squares we look at one another.


----------



## Lanefan

pemerton said:


> (1) It's not "more reallistic". It's different, but it's not realistic.



 [MENTION=3400]billd91[/MENTION] already covered this one, so...what he said.



> (2) What makes you think a 4e PC who swoons in combat, and then recovers to fight on, has "had the livin' tar beaten out of him/her"? Maybe you're into nonsense narration, but I'm not.



Even in the most gamist and-or disconnected versions of what hit points represent in any edition that I've seen posted in those arguments, a common theme is that going to (or below, pre-4e) 0 h.p. means you've taken enough of a beating that if left untended you're quite possibly going to die.  The rules of all editions also have it that going to or below 0 is auto-death (0e), is auto-death* if not treated or cured quite soon (1e-2e-3e), or presents a significant risk of death if not treated or cured quite soon (4e-5e).  These deaths aren't being caused by fainting. 

So to suggest someone repeatedly going to or below 0 within a short time "has had the livin' tar beaten out of him/her" is "nonsense narration" falls well below your usual standard, sir; and the tar on the ground that wasn't there before will back me up on that. 

* - auto-death if below 0 and untreated.  Going right to 0 but no lower and being left untreated is auto-death in 1e but my be less auto in 2e-3e; not sure.

Do this several times in a day (or even several times in a single combat) and then feel 100% fine the next morning?  Far too far toward the unrealistic side of the spectrum for my tastes.

Lan-"or has swooning now been declared a potentially-fatal condition in D&D in some memo I missed"-efan


----------



## The Crimson Binome

Lanefan said:


> Even in the most gamist and-or disconnected versions of what hit points represent in any edition that I've seen posted in those arguments, a common theme is that going to (or below, pre-4e) 0 h.p. means you've taken enough of a beating that if left untended you're quite possibly going to die. The rules of all editions also have it that going to or below 0 is auto-death (0e), is auto-death* if not treated or cured quite soon (1e-2e-3e), or presents a significant risk of death if not treated or cured quite soon (4e-5e). These deaths aren't being caused by fainting.



This has been covered before, though I won't fault you for forgetting it, since the argument is profoundly non-sensical.

Basically, the logic of hit points in 4E is that they don't correspond to _anything_, until such time as the damage is healed. If you recover from going to zero, whether naturally or through inspiration (or possibly even through magic), then it turns out you were never actually wounded in the first place! If you heal from it, then you must have just fainted. If you die from your injuries, only _then_ does it turn out that you actually _were_ seriously wounded all along.

And if you try and check whether a fallen character is actually wounded, or just unconscious, then the answer is _always_ indeterminate. You can't possibly observe that state, because it hasn't been determined yet.

Seriously.


----------



## Tony Vargas

cmad1977 said:


> I dunno if it saves D&D. I know that the lack of slavish adherence to a grid brought my entire group back to gaming...



 I'm glad you were so delighted by 13th Age in 2013.    But, why'd you ever leave, when there were so many grid-free games to choose from, already?  Did you really jump ship the moment D&D went 'on the grid,' with 2e C&T?



Lanefan said:


> Even in the most gamist and-or disconnected versions of what hit points represent  0 h.p. means you've taken enough of a beating that if left untended you're quite possibly going to die.



 Yep. And that's profoundly unrealistic.  You fight at 100%, even after taking 88 of your 89 hps when that huge ancient red dragon breathed on you, but if you take 3 more hps from some burning oil, you are now so badly burned that you die in 8 minutes, unless someone wraps a few bandages around you?
Assuming they do, you'll be utterly incapacitated for a week, no matter how many cure critical wounds spells get cast on you, but after tgat week in the penalty box, you're at 100% again?  No chance of any permanent disability, even if you took the weeks to heal naturally?

Saying anything is 'more unrealistic' than that is prettymuch meaningless.  

And, as always, when we start flogging D&D on 'realism' grounds, we should really be able it cut it some slack for modeling a genre that is unrealistic by it's very nature.  Its easy to forget that, since D&D doesn't model fantasy any better than it does reality, but we really /should/ cut it some slack in the realism department, anyway.  And, if we have to cut one ed 60 squares of slack rather than 30 scale inches (or 10, outdoors) or 300', we shouldn't quibble over the difference.


----------



## MichaelSomething

We're going to hit points now?  

I wish there was still a morale system in D&D, cause I can feel it drop a few points...


----------



## Sadras

Tony Vargas said:


> Saying anything is 'more unrealistic' than that is prettymuch meaningless.




I think the question begs to who?
As you very well know, many DMs tinker away to make D&D ever _more realistic_. Just because x DMs might not care as much for inflecting _realism_ for whatever section of the game, doesn't mean it doesn't matter to y DMs.


----------



## Gibili

Tony Vargas said:


> And, as always, when we start flogging D&D on 'realism' grounds, we should really be able it cut it some slack for modeling a genre that is unrealistic by it's very nature.  Its easy to forget that, since D&D doesn't model fantasy any better than it does reality, but we really /should/ cut it some slack in the realism department, anyway.  And, if we have to cut one ed 60 squares of slack rather than 30 scale inches (or 10, outdoors) or 300', we shouldn't quibble over the difference.




Yes agreed.  The main aim of games like D&D is not to be amazing constructs that model "real life" as closely as possible.  The main aim of the game is to provide a framework that allows the participants to have fun.  Sure the 0hp boundary is wholly unrealistic but so what.  It is a simple mechanism that allows the game to flow quickly and for players to be free to roleplay and have fun and not be constantly looking over their shoulders at rules, tables, and myriads of options to closely mimic what happens when someone is hit a few times by a mace...or arrows...or magic...or dragon breath...or by a fall...or grit in the eye...or a bad cold...or beer going down the wrong way...or...well you get my drift 

As a DM you are always free to model things better if you like.  I often have enemies give up the fight when their hit points get low, reflecting their desire to live, their exhaustion, blood loss or whatever, rather than them fighting to the bitter end.

There is always a tendency to want to increase the complexity of rules to make them more realistic.  I've been guilty of that myself and have always backed off to a simple model because as stated above, the aim is fun.


----------



## Tony Vargas

Sadras said:


> I think the question begs to who?



 Anyone coping with reality on a daily basis?



> As you very well know, many DMs tinker away to make D&D ever _more realistic_.



 As futile as trying to paint some version of it as less realistic, IMHO/X.

Rather if you want to improve D&D as a model, make it a better model of fantasy, be it literary, mythic, or pop-culture fantasy.  It's no potential at all as a model of reality.


----------



## aramis erak

MichaelSomething said:


> We're going to hit points now?
> 
> I wish there was still a morale system in D&D, cause I can feel it drop a few points...




There is... p 273. It's framed with "creatures" and "groups of creatures"... which implies, but does not state, it doesn't apply to PC's. DC10 Wis Save


----------



## Sadras

Tony Vargas said:


> Anyone coping with reality on a daily basis?




Why are you dressing up in armour and slaying orcs in reality?



> Rather if you want to improve D&D as a model, make it a better model of fantasy, be it literary, mythic, or pop-culture fantasy.  It's no potential at all as a model of reality.




I do not see why the methods have to necessarily be mutually exclusive.


----------



## aramis erak

Sadras said:


> Why are you dressing up in armour and slaying orcs in reality?




Not orks, but... SCAers do put on armour and practice practical swordsmanship.


----------



## Tony Vargas

Sadras said:


> I do not see why the methods have to necessarily be mutually exclusive.



 Because fantasy and reality are very, very different.  

Or we'd wear armor to dinner like the Knights in Excalibur.


----------



## pemerton

[MENTION=29398]Lanefan[/MENTION], [MENTION=3400]billd91[/MENTION] - [MENTION=996]Tony Vargas[/MENTION]'s reply makes the point that needs to be made aboout "realism" in a hit point paradigm.

As far as narration of hp loss and zero hp is concerned - if you're narrating hp loss, and dropping to zero hp, in surgical detail, and then having your suspension of disbelief disrupted by the recovery that the game rules provide for, well, I would suggest changing your narration!

As I posted upthread, as a former RM player/GM, and someone who was pretty familiar with the drfit from AD&D to RM, RQ etc in the 80s/early 90s, it remains very strange to see posters arguing for AC-&-hp combat on "realism" grounds, and to be distinguishing AD&D or 3E from 4e on that basis.

Also, someone upthread (maybe [MENTION=6688277]Sadras[/MENTION]) mentioned tinkering - the most trivial tinkering possible to a RPG is to change the short and extended rest durations in 4e or 5e. (I don't know how common it is with 5e; based on dicsussions on teese boards it was extremely common with 4e.)


----------



## Tony Vargas

pemerton said:


> As I posted upthread, as a former RM player/GM, and someone who was pretty familiar with the drfit from AD&D to RM, RQ etc in the 80s/early 90s, it remains very strange to see posters arguing for AC-&-hp combat on "realism" grounds.



 Indeed, I wasted much breath (actual face to face conversation) back in the day, defending hps,  AC, saves (esp poison saves), and the 1 min round, _from _"realism."  

Realism was still a real(npi) thing, then, there were more wargamers still in the hobby relative to kids like myself, and realism must've been much more important in the context of historical wargaming.



> - the most trivial tinkering possible to a RPG is to change the short and extended rest durations in 4e or 5e. (I don't know how common it is with 5e; based on dicsussions on teese boards it was extremely common with 4e.)



 It's a variant right in the 5e DMG.


----------



## billd91

pemerton said:


> [MENTION=29398]Lanefan[/MENTION], [MENTION=3400]billd91[/MENTION] - [MENTION=996]Tony Vargas[/MENTION]'s reply makes the point that needs to be made aboout "realism" in a hit point paradigm.




Not really. Everyone’s going to have different tolerances for the differing levels of abstraction, even in variations on dealing with hit point loss and recovery. Assuming that just because there’s one level of unrealism going on means that any other level *must* be accepted is really just a fallacy. 



			
				pemerton said:
			
		

> As far as narration of hp loss and zero hp is concerned - if you're narrating hp loss, and dropping to zero hp, in surgical detail, and then having your suspension of disbelief disrupted by the recovery that the game rules provide for, well, I would suggest changing your narration!




No surgical narration is required to see a disconnect in starting death saves and being at 100% after just a night’s sleep and finding it jarring, even in the fantasy genre. It’s one of the elements of 5e I’m not too keen on myself, and I otherwise really enjoy the game.


----------



## pemerton

billd91 said:


> No surgical narration is required to see a disconnect in starting death saves and being at 100% after just a night’s sleep and finding it jarring, even in the fantasy genre. It’s one of the elements of 5e I’m not too keen on myself, and I otherwise really enjoy the game.



But the fact that you're fine and dandy at 1 hp in AD&D, so that every injury in AD&D is one that causes death _unless_ tended to in which case it lays you out for a week, causes no issues?

I'm not the one who raised the AD&D zero hp rules as a marker of realism, precisely because the above is not very realistic!

(Whereas death saves, for instance, are easily treated as a metagame mechanic rather than a marker of ingame status.)


----------



## MichaelSomething

billd91 said:


> No surgical narration is required to see a disconnect in starting death saves and being at 100% after just a night’s sleep and finding it jarring, even in the fantasy genre. It’s one of the elements of 5e I’m not too keen on myself, and I otherwise really enjoy the game.




It takes less effort to say you recover everything then spending a day casting all of your cure spells to recover your missing HP and then resting another day to restore your healing spells.

If you're one of those unorthodox parties without any source of healing, spending 2 weeks to heal after every major battle could get real old real quick.


Though partial recovery rules could go a long way for making resource attrition/time management more of a thing, ease of use is always an issue.


----------



## Shasarak

pemerton said:


> But the fact that you're fine and dandy at 1 hp in AD&D, so that every injury in AD&D is one that causes death _unless_ tended to in which case it lays you out for a week, causes no issues?
> 
> I'm not the one who raised the AD&D zero hp rules as a marker of realism, precisely because the above is not very realistic!




That is true, being almost dead and then being brought back to life and only having to rest for a week is not very realistic.

But in any case it is simply not true that having 1 hp left in ADnD means that you are "just fine and dandy".  It would mean that *any* injury is going to be the one that potentially kills you.  As you yourself say, descrbing your 1hp character as "just fine and Dandy" is simply nonsense narration.  Frankly Gary Gygax himself does a much better job of describing such a character in his explanation of hps.



> (Whereas death saves, for instance, are easily treated as a metagame mechanic rather than a marker of ingame status.)




Which is exactly the Schrodinger approach that @_*Saelorn*_ described, it does not make sense narratively in the moment.  Only after you have resolved the scenario can you actually describe what happened.


----------



## Tony Vargas

pemerton said:


> But the fact that you're fine and dandy at 1 hp in AD&D, so that every injury in AD&D is one that causes death _unless_ tended to in which case it lays you out for a week, causes no issues?



 And the total absence of debilitating or lasting injuries, too.  

The explanation of hps going back to the 1e DMG, combined with the system eschewing any sort of wound spiral or lasting injury, makes it clear that it can't be modeling any too-serious/difficult-to-recover-function-after injuries, right up to actual death.  Its unrealistic, of course, but, having accepted it, actually more consistent to allow hp recovery in a short time - second wind, HD/Surges, martial healing, non-physical damage, &c. 




> (Whereas death saves, for instance, are easily treated as a metagame mechanic rather than a marker of ingame status.)



Death saves are OK at modeling the uncertainty the reader/viewers (and presumably other characters in the story) have when a character 'drops' in a genre story.  Not great, but a bit better than a countdown to certain death at a certain time.


----------



## billd91

MichaelSomething said:


> It takes less effort to say you recover everything then spending a day casting all of your cure spells to recover your missing HP and then resting another day to restore your healing spells.
> 
> If you're one of those unorthodox parties without any source of healing, spending 2 weeks to heal after every major battle could get real old real quick.
> 
> 
> Though partial recovery rules could go a long way for making resource attrition/time management more of a thing, ease of use is always an issue.




It does take less effort, sure. It takes even less effort than that to just say everyone regains all their hit points after every fight - and even less to not even count hit points for a PC at all. But the lines gotta be drawn somewhere, right? We can't all go by the "it takes less effort" rule for everything - there'd be nothing to do if we did.


----------



## MichaelSomething

billd91 said:


> It takes even less effort than that to just say everyone regains all their hit points after every fight




Is that a knock against wands of cure -blank- wounds and/or healing surges??


----------



## R_Chance

Brings to mind old homebrew rules. We were wargamers and the abstraction of HP bothered us.

We were too happy with the game to worry about it at first. We house-ruled wound penalties and tried it during our later original edition and 1E games. Over 25% lightly wounded, -1 to Hit. Over 50% Moderately wounded, -2 hit probability and -25% movement. Over 75% badly injured and -4 to hit and -50% movement. At 0 you were unconscious. At low levels it didn't take much to render you non combat effective. Bandaged up and you could hobble along without losing more hit points. No first aid and you had to save or lose a hit point. To heal you needed to stay put. It worked better as PCs increased in level, it tended to hamstring low level PCs too much back in the day of fairly low hit points. 

Given the higher hit points of PCs in more recent iterations of the game it might work better at low level, but it still cuts into PCs adventuring ability. Might give some room for healing tool kits though... with kits short rests could allow up to 25% recovery, long rests up to 50% and more would take increased time. Have 0 HP conscious but unable to mover negative HP unconscious... still roll HD to recover points but cap it at the percentages. Player has to choose to spend more dice or less to hit the cap. My mind is wondering through well worn paths.

Damn well make you appreciate magical healing  Increased "realism" (verisimilitude might be a better term) I suppose, but increased book keeping and probably increased PC fatality. On the other hand it would apply to NPCs / Monsters too... or not? A "ferocity" trait that allows some Monsters / PCs / NPCs to fight on unhindered... especially Barbarians, Constructs (?), Golems (?), Undead, Non material beings...  

*sigh* Hit points, why is it always hit points? Given how many other abstractions there are in this game, this one always gets the attention. Still, fun to think through on that nostalgia train 

As I recall there were a number of similar variants (some in The Dragon maybe?) on wound levels back in the day and I'm sure other old geezers have their variations on it.


----------



## Hussar

Wow, I skip a few pages reading the thread and it turns from an interesting discussion about mini use to yet another edition war wank.  Don't you folks get tired of it?


----------



## darkbard

Shasarak said:


> Which is exactly the Schrodinger approach that @_*Saelorn*_ described, it does not make sense narratively in the moment.  Only after you have resolved the scenario can you actually describe what happened.




But there is, of course, ample genre precedent for such situations. How many times have you watched an action film wherein the hero is shot and fallen to the ground, seemingly dead, only to have a later scene reveal the bullet was stopped by a lead game token in his breast pocket or somesuch? I daresay such Schrodinger deaths are a veritable staple of the action/fantasy genre!

Narration is easily manipulated without stretching belief beyond what is already suspended for the genre.


----------



## Jay Verkuilen

pemerton said:


> Most of this seems to be about how the game handles resource management (which, as far as hp are concerned, had always been a thing for every class). But doesn't seem to me to be particularly evocative of "cool down" rates.
> 
> I know that a lot of people complained about the 4e resource recovery framework, because in D&D only spell casters and 3E barbarians have daily recovery abilities. But I don't see how this remotely relates to being an MMO.




4E clearly drew on three types of games that were quite current at the time: MMOs, CCGs, and miniatures skirmish games. It's got a much stronger family resemblance to these types than prior editions had. So there aren't definitive features but I do think a lot of older players were bothered by them, and, of course, there were folks who really loved them. The people I know who really loved 4E were the biggest MtG, minis game, and MMO heads. I don't think this was an accident. 




> I don't dispute that it reminded you of City of Heroes. It reminded someone else of WOW. It reminded me of HeroWars/Quest (uniform PC build and resolution structures that bind the PC to a cosmological drama about to explode) and Moldvay Basic (simple, crisp effect descriptions which leave most of the adjudication as a table matter rather than being spelled out in needless and constraining detail).
> 
> Given the number of people who have tried to "disprove" the resemblance of 4e to Moldvay Basic, I don't think I'm doing too much harm expressing my inability to see any close resemblance to a MMO.




I really don't get the connection of 4E to Moldvay Basic. The 5E playtest clearly drew on that right down to the look and feel of the layout, though they ended up backing away from that in the final version. 

4E seemed to try to adjudicate nearly everything whereas Basic was much more of a "here's a really simple set of rules". If 4E, almost everything was a power of some sort and every class (until Essentials) had the same structure of At Will, Encounter, and Daily. In BESM, the only casters were wizards, elves, and clerics. There were no parallels to Encounter powers at all. Anybody but a caster made basic attacks or took relevant actions, most of which were adjudicated by the DM given the lack of any real system for that outside thief skills and a few other ad hoc systems like detecting secret doors or listening at doors. 

IMO, the writing aside, I can't think of too many similarities between BESM and 4E. 




> Classic D&D (oiginal D&D, 1st ed AD&D, B/X, maybe even 2nd ed AD&D?) used the notion of a "turn". That is, one unit of party action! In the fiction, it correlates to 10 minutes.
> 
> 4e replaces thar with the notion of an "encounter". That is, one unit of party drama. In the fiction, it correlates to 5 minutes.
> 
> This is one of those things that made me think of Moldvay Basic. I thought MMOs used real seconds of time, not units of in-fiction time given labels that reflect their significance to the activity of gameplay.




The notion of "turn" is clearly drawn from the game's wargaming roots. I think the big difference is that it's actually a unit of time, whereas an encounter is a much more flexible unit of time that could be 5 minutes but often is much shorter. More on this below. 

MMOs certainly do use units of time, which make sense given the fact that they're real time games. Otherwise they have no real ability to synchronize actions across all the players. 

I've not played any MMOs (I know myself well enough to know that's a _bad_ idea) but have played video games with cooldown. Often these are set up in a way so that if you're in a fight a long cooldown can only be used once per fight. The CRPG _Pillars of Eternity_, which has a system very clearly modeled on 4E---I have called it "what 4E would be if it could" because the computer handles all the scut work of condition tracking and so forth---there are quite clear "encounter" and "daily" powers. One of the keys to the system is gaming the fights by only peeling off a relatively small, bite-sized fight so your encounter powers constantly refresh. To manage this, the game taxes some abilities such as summons, by making it impossible or difficult to summon or buff outside of combat. The system, is, in short, pretty much 4E taken to its logical extreme. (_Pillars_ is a game that would appeal to the 4E stalwarts, and the designers had some very interesting ideas, such as the way they handle the bard-esque chanter. And indeed they intend to release a TT version.)

A turn in 1E and BESM is an actual unit of time, though: 1 turn is 10 minutes. In 1E a combat round is a minute, a fact many people found rather ludicrous and either ignored or changed. I think we used 12 seconds. In BESM I don't recall how long a round is, though I thought it was 10 seconds, so roughly similar.  




> But stuff that tires you out a bit less, and takes only a short rest to recover, is not easy to relate to reality? Yet short rests seem to be widely accepted in 5e. So I don't really follow this.




I think many people accept it, but it's one of my least favorite aspects of the game. 

For instance, there are classes that synergize much better due to having a lot of short rest recoveries and others that basically can't be bothered with short rests. Compare a party of a monk, battlemaster fighter, and warlock to, say, a party of a barbarian, paladin, and sorcerer. The former is highly short rest dependent while the latter gets minimal to no benefit from a short rest. This often seems to set up an inherent conflict among players and between players and the DM about something that's fundamentally about rules. Another big difference between the notion of the BESM or AD&D turn and the encounter or short rest is that the turn made no pretense to being in the game world at all. It's just there and by BESM or AD&D it's not even all that relevant in terms of game play as it's just a unit of time like the square on the battlemap is of distance. The encounter or short rest, by contrast, intrude on the fiction in a way that BESM/AD&D "turn" or "square" tend not to. These units impose a certain amount of discretization on continuous space of action, but for the most part we learn to ignore them. Encounter, however, is a much more macro unit of discretization.


----------



## Sadras

Hussar said:


> Wow, I skip a few pages reading the thread and it turns from an interesting discussion about mini use to yet another edition war wank.




Those are the very best wanks.


----------



## Jay Verkuilen

billd91 said:


> Not really. Everyone’s going to have different tolerances for the differing levels of abstraction, even in variations on dealing with hit point loss and recovery. Assuming that just because there’s one level of unrealism going on means that any other level *must* be accepted is really just a fallacy.




This is a very, very good point. Everyone's also going to have varying tolerances for different kinds of abstractions, too. 

Many years ago, Monte Cook defended hit points---something that often bothered me before I read his argument---as one of the prices we pay for having a game that can handle things of drastically different scale without really bogging down. Essentially his point was that hit points were one of the things that let us have dragons and pixies on the same board with each other. I can't find his post on this anymore but it was a good argument. 

The "bloodied" condition was something 4E did kind of neatly because it connected being at half hit points to qualitative things. Some monsters or characters got more powerful when bloodied. Some monsters or characters were incentivized to attack bloodied targets. It connected a game status to the rules and the narrative in a fairly elegant way that other aspects, such as "encounter" power or "daily" power never did, especially "daily" for characters like rogues or fighters. It wasn't perfect, but it was generally decent and is an example of something I wish the designers had kept in 5E. (Yes, I could house rule it....)

There's a lot of things that 4E did I liked, despite being overall negative towards it. My biggest objection to it was how slow it was at the medium to high levels and how egregiously long character sheets got.


----------



## Jay Verkuilen

Shasarak said:


> Maybe the reason that Ruin Quest is doing so well is that you can get your leg broken and your hand chopped off when fighting a bunch of mooks. :shrug:




Yeah, that's a game that's _much_ too far down the "realism" track for me, although the old fumble tables were pretty ludicrous and you could end up dying from weapon fumbles....


----------



## pemerton

Shasarak said:


> it is simply not true that having 1 hp left in ADnD means that you are "just fine and dandy".  It would mean that *any* injury is going to be the one that potentially kills you.



That's true of _me_ when I'm fine and dandy - any blow from a sword might kil me.

There are plenty of characters in the world of AD&D who have only 1 hp.



Shasarak said:


> it does not make sense narratively in the moment.  Only after you have resolved the scenario can you actually describe what happened.



In LotR, JRRT is ambivalent about Frodo's fate after being stabbed with a troll spear. It turns out that Frodo is OK.

That made complete narrative sense. "Narrative sense" does not depend upon certainty. (In other words, what [MENTION=1282]darkbard[/MENTION] said.)


----------



## billd91

pemerton said:


> In LotR, JRRT is ambivalent about Frodo's fate after being stabbed with a troll spear. It turns out that Frodo is OK.




??? 
That sentence makes no sense to me. I strongly doubt JRRT had mixed feelings about Frodo’s fate when the orc chieftain speared him.


----------



## pemerton

Jay Verkuilen said:


> 4E clearly drew on three types of games that were quite current at the time: MMOs, CCGs, and miniatures skirmish games. It's got a much stronger family resemblance to these types than prior editions had.



AD&D has a closer resemblance to miniatures wargaming than 4e, right down to advice in the DMG about mini scales, rules for building castles and then laying seige to them, etc. 4e (as Rob Heinsoo explained in an interview in 2008) has a closer resemblance to contemporary "indie" RPGs.

As far as miniature skirmishing is concerned, all that 4e seems to add to 3.5E (which had creatures spaces defined in terms of symmetrical mini bases, and had rules for 5' steps (= 1 sq shift), etc) is a larger variety of powers that make _indvidual_ positioning during melee more important; and to change the action economy so as to encourage mobility.



Jay Verkuilen said:


> So there aren't definitive features but I do think a lot of older players were bothered by them



I'm an "older" player. So are most of the other 4e players who post on these boards, as best I can tell. This notion that "older" players were especially bothered by 4e has no factual basis that I'm aware of.



Jay Verkuilen said:


> The people I know who really loved 4E were the biggest MtG, minis game, and MMO heads.



And the people I know who really loved 4e included someone whose other gaming passions were Rolemaster (his first RPG), Civilisaiton and Diplomacy; a boardgamer who's been playing RPGs since Moldvay Basic; a wargamer who's been plauying just as long; and a couple of old Moldvay players who (as far as I know) are WOW amateurs at best.

What distinguished the people I know who loved 4e was that they (i) enjoyed games, and (ii) were not interested in a game that involves following the GM's plot crumbs. I don't think this was an accident. 



Jay Verkuilen said:


> I really don't get the connection of 4E to Moldvay Basic. The 5E playtest clearly drew on that right down to the look and feel of the layout, though they ended up backing away from that in the final version.
> 
> 4E seemed to try to adjudicate nearly everything whereas Basic was much more of a "here's a really simple set of rules".



Where does 4e try to adjudicate nearly everything? How hard is it to freeze a puddle using Icy Terrain? To close a portal to the Abyss? To make a NPC fall in love with you?

4e has a clear action economy; so does Moldvay Basic. Both have crisp, simple presentation of character abilities. 4e's combat rules are far more intricate, but not because they try to "adjudicate nearly everything" but simply because they encompass a far greater number of parameters than Moldvay Basic does. 4e's non-combat rules are both simpler and more general than Moldvay's, because 4e draws on 20 intervening years of RPG design (and especially techniques of "closed scene" resolution developed in indie RPGs).

Moldvay Basic isn't a font or layout; it's about a game that presents itself with clear rules and doesn't encourage the GM to manipulate the rules with a nod and a wink. 4e is the first version of D&D since to return to that approach. (Of course it's actual gameplay is different from Moldvay - it's not about Gygaxian dungeon crawling, but about the sort of heroic epic that Moldvay Basic alludes to in its Foreword but doesn't actually support.)



Jay Verkuilen said:


> If 4E, almost everything was a power of some sort and every class (until Essentials) had the same structure of At Will, Encounter, and Daily. In BESM, the only casters were wizards, elves, and clerics. There were no parallels to Encounter powers at all. Anybody but a caster made basic attacks or took relevant actions, most of which were adjudicated by the DM given the lack of any real system for that outside thief skills and a few other ad hoc systems like detecting secret doors or listening at doors.



Moldvay has a fundamental action economy: the turn, which limits player declared actions and correlates them to the various other economies of the game (wandering monsters; light - torches, lanterns or spells; searching; fighting; etc).

4e has a series of action economies: the round in combat; the encounter; the "go" in a skill challenge - and these correlate to the other economies of the game (recovery of expended powers; making checks so as to change the fiction; accruing treasure parcels; etc).

It's the tightness of design, and its clear orientation to purpose, that connects the two games. Also the empahsis on adjudication over karaoke.



Jay Verkuilen said:


> The notion of "turn" is clearly drawn from the game's wargaming roots. I think the big difference is that it's actually a unit of time, whereas an encounter is a much more flexible unit of time that could be 5 minutes but often is much shorter.



The relevant passages were already cited upthread. The duration "until the end of the encounter" means 5 minutes. Encounter powers are recovered with a rest of 5 minutes or so. The idea that "the encounter" as a mechanical unit in 4e is plagued by uncertainty is not borne out by the rules of the game.



Jay Verkuilen said:


> The encounter or short rest, by contrast, intrude on the fiction in a way that BESM/AD&D "turn" or "square" tend not to. These units impose a certain amount of discretization on continuous space of action, but for the most part we learn to ignore them. Encounter, however, is a much more macro unit of discretization.



In Moldvay Basic and AD&D, all combat takes a turn (including binding "wounds", etc); all searching takes a turn; all movement is in blocks of turns; etc.

If you ignore those, then you are ignoring the action economy of those games. Presumably you could llikewise ignore the action eocnomy of 4e. (The 4e DMG2 even had a discussion of various ways to do this.)



Jay Verkuilen said:


> there are classes that synergize much better due to having a lot of short rest recoveries and others that basically can't be bothered with short rests.



But this isn't an argument that short rest abilities are "unrealistic" or "break immersion" or "rupture suspension of disbelief". It's a complaint about assymetric resource suites across classes. That complaint is as old as wilderness adventuring in which the MUs dominate because, outside the dungeon, they can safely nova their spell load-out and thereby dominate encounters.

Of course 4e solved this problem.


----------



## pemerton

billd91 said:


> ???
> That sentence makes no sense to me. I strongly doubt JRRT had mixed feelings about Frodo’s fate when the orc chieftain speared him.



But (as an author) did present "contradictory ideas". Ie generates a sense that Frodo is dead, while also generating a sense that, as the protagonist, Frodo will survive. The contradiction (or ambivalence) is subsequently resolved in favour of the latter.


----------



## Kobold Boots

billd91 said:


> ???
> That sentence makes no sense to me. I strongly doubt JRRT had mixed feelings about Frodo’s fate when the orc chieftain speared him.




Depends on how you define ambivalent and whether or not you break the fourth wall.

As an author, I know whether or not I'm actually killing a character when I write the piece.  I can stabby stabby all I want if I know the character is going to be alive on the other side of it a few chapters later.

Similarly, I know my intentions as a DM when I'm running a campaign.  I let my players turn the dials prior to campaign start on the "high magic, low magic", "high fatality, low fatality" scales and it pretty much works for the table.  For the record the dials at my table usually skew towards high fatality and mid to low magic.

KB


----------



## Jay Verkuilen

Gibili said:


> There is always a tendency to want to increase the complexity of rules to make them more realistic.  I've been guilty of that myself and have always backed off to a simple model because as stated above, the aim is fun.




The real trick is finding a sweet spot so that the secondary reality of the game isn't jarring to the participants. What different people will find jarring is, of course, up for debate. For example, people I play with seem to generally have a hard time with frequent character resurrection and raising of the dead. We want something like that to be very rare/special, not a matter for a fairly trivial spell. Thus we tend to have a gentleman's agreement that such things are either highly unusual or simply don't exist in our games. That's just an example, of course. There are other things that will bother different groups. Game designers make tradeoffs among these aspects and will often not judge well for anyone's particular table. 

IMO this is something that 5E has, mostly, gotten right. You can run it without lots of magic items, for instance. Healing is a bit more of a challenge, though it's more open that it was before 4E. (Another of those 4E things I wish they'd kept more of is healing surge. That would have been a great way to differentiate the bard or the not-as-yet warlord from the cleric! The bard helps you activate what's in you already, while the cleric could provide outside help.)


----------



## billd91

Jay Verkuilen said:


> IMO this is something that 5E has, mostly, gotten right. You can run it without lots of magic items, for instance. Healing is a bit more of a challenge, though it's more open that it was before 4E. (Another of those 4E things I wish they'd kept more of is healing surge. That would have been a great way to differentiate the bard or the not-as-yet warlord from the cleric! The bard helps you activate what's in you already, while the cleric could provide outside help.)




Honestly, I think the bard still fulfills that role pretty well - Song of Rest offers bonus healing other characters are already spending some of their hit dice to heal.


----------



## Tony Vargas

Hussar said:


> Wow, I skip a few pages reading the thread and it turns from an interesting discussion about mini use to yet another edition war .
> Don't you folks get tired of it?



ASCII characters 34 & 65 in conjunction have suddenly been coming up disproportionately in this thread.  'Grid Dependence' has been a fakeversy since AD&D fans started attacking 3e for it, quite early in the current millennium, so I suppose it was inevitable.

That 5e's support for TotM consists prettymuch entirely of just using the term in a positive way as it professes to 'default' to it, makes it more than a little ironic, too.



darkbard said:


> .I daresay such Schrodinger deaths are a veritable staple of the action/fantasy genre!



 Very much so, sure.  And there's often ways back from death in genre, too.  Usually more involved than pushing a Vancian spell button, but a staple. 



Jay Verkuilen said:


> The people I know who really loved 4E were the biggest MtG, minis game, and MMO heads. I don't think this was an accident.



 I suspect it wasn't an accident.  It  may have been selection bias or confirmation bias, for instance.  Myself, I loved 4e (like I have 1e & 3.5 - a bit less than 1e, if we're feeding sibling rivalries), despised M:tG ("Tragic: the Addiction"), only played tactical games like Battletech or Carwars when there was nothing else to do, and won't touch a video game (the last one I played was Asteroids), CRPG, or MMO.  



Jay Verkuilen said:


> The "bloodied" condition was something 4E did kind of neatly because it connected being at half hit points to qualitative things. Some monsters or characters got more powerful when bloodied. Some monsters or characters were incentivized to attack bloodied targets. It connected a game status to the rules and the narrative in a fairly elegant way. It wasn't perfect, but it was generally decent and is an example of something I wish the designers had kept in 5E. (Yes, I could house rule it....)



 5e kept it in a side-bar, they just didn't dare attach a jargon term to it.  You could add a monster ability that kicked in 'when reduced to 1/2 hps' or worked vs targets that 'had taken at least half their hps in damage' quite easily.  It's just a little wordy, because no jargon.



> . My biggest objection to it was how slow it was at the medium to high levels and how egregiously long character sheets got.



Nod.  The first time we hit Paragon, it was like running full tilt into a gelatinous cube.   A few levels later it'd sped back up again. FWIW.  Character sheets in the on-line builder were weirdly inflated /and/ left out critical information, it was some egregiously bad formatting.  Prior to that all that made sheets long was printing out the full texts of powers & items available to the character - if you printed out the full texts of spells available to casters in any other ed, it'd've been far longer...



pemerton said:


> In LotR, JRRT is ambivalent about Frodo's fate after being stabbed with a troll spear. It turns out that Frodo is OK.
> That made complete narrative sense. "Narrative sense" does not depend upon certainty.



 'Ambivalent' is an odd way to put "presented the event with a level of uncertainty."







pemerton said:


> But (as an author) did present "contradictory ideas". Ie generates a sense that Frodo is dead, while also generating a sense that, as the protagonist, Frodo will survive. The contradiction (or ambivalence) is subsequently resolved in favour of the latter.



 OK. 



pemerton said:


> I'm an "older" player. So are most of the other 4e players who post on these boards, as best I can tell. This notion that "older" players were especially bothered by 4e has no factual basis that I'm aware of.



 I am, too, but, IMX, the longer a player being introduced to 4e had played earlier editions, and the earlier the editions they played, the more disequilibrium they experienced in learning 4e.  It was just too unfamiliar, and the experience of 'not getting' something you identify as having 'mastered' can be disconcerting.  



> And the people I know who really loved 4e included someone whose other gaming passions were Rolemaster (his first RPG), Civilisaiton and Diplomacy; a boardgamer who's been playing RPGs since Moldvay Basic; a wargamer who's been plauying just as long; and a couple of old Moldvay players who (as far as I know) are WOW amateurs at best.



 I was in club at the time that was heavily weighted towards Storyteller and deeply prejudiced against D&D - they took to 4e easily.  

It was very much the "not-D&D D&D" in good ways as well as bad.  



> Moldvay Basic isn't a font or layout; it's about a game that presents itself with clear rules and doesn't encourage the GM to manipulate the rules with a nod and a wink.



 And it wasn't burned on YouTube?  Er, I mean, video tape?  Weird.


----------



## Jay Verkuilen

pemerton said:


> But (as an author) did present "contradictory ideas". Ie generates a sense that Frodo is dead, while also generating a sense that, as the protagonist, Frodo will survive. The contradiction (or ambivalence) is subsequently resolved in favour of the latter.




I get the use of the term "ambivalent" as being more general than feelings, but it's definitely secondary usage. "Ambiguous" is probably more likely to be understood by most readers.


----------



## Shasarak

darkbard said:


> But there is, of course, ample genre precedent for such situations. How many times have you watched an action film wherein the hero is shot and fallen to the ground, seemingly dead, only to have a later scene reveal the bullet was stopped by a lead game token in his breast pocket or somesuch? I daresay such Schrodinger deaths are a veritable staple of the action/fantasy genre!
> 
> Narration is easily manipulated without stretching belief beyond what is already suspended for the genre.




Of course there are movies where the hero appears to get shot but does not just as there are movies where the hero does not look like they were shot but turns out that they were.   That is the whole point of Schrodinger, two events are possible and you dont know which one actually happened until afterwards.

I guess the bit that is particularly stupid to me is if the person in your example narrates that, rather then the bullet being stopped by the lead game token, he was not actually shot at all.


----------



## The Crimson Binome

darkbard said:


> But there is, of course, ample genre precedent for such situations. How many times have you watched an action film wherein the hero is shot and fallen to the ground, seemingly dead, only to have a later scene reveal the bullet was stopped by a lead game token in his breast pocket or somesuch? I daresay such Schrodinger deaths are a veritable staple of the action/fantasy genre!
> 
> Narration is easily manipulated without stretching belief beyond what is already suspended for the genre.



There's a substantial difference between such false-deaths being a thing that _could_ happen, and being a thing that _must_ happen in every instance. Only the former is well-founded in both fiction and reality.

More to the point, the idea that reality could be inherently unfixed until the time of observation, is one which is _completely_ inconceivable. There is no possible reality which could correspond to such a thing. Whether the cat is dead or not is a fact which is _already_ true, regardless of whether we observe it. Whether or not that hit was substantially physical is already set in stone at the moment of impact, if that game world has _any_ semblance of similarity to any believable world.


----------



## Shasarak

pemerton said:


> That's true of _me_ when I'm fine and dandy - any blow from a sword might kil me.
> 
> There are plenty of characters in the world of AD&D who have only 1 hp.




Yes that is true.  There certainly are plenty of characters in ADnD who only have 1 hp and who rightly fear being killed by any blow of a sword.

Comparetively there are the other characters with more hps who can not be killed by any one blow with a sword.  Even a blow from an Ogre will not be enough to take them down with a single strike.  And when one of those characters only have 1hp remaining your narration that they are "fine and dandy" is ludicrous.



> In LotR, JRRT is ambivalent about Frodo's fate after being stabbed with a troll spear. It turns out that Frodo is OK.
> 
> That made complete narrative sense. "Narrative sense" does not depend upon certainty. (In other words, what [MENTION=1282]darkbard[/MENTION] said.)




JRRT knew that Frodo was wearing Mithril armour so, like Thanos said, the Troll should have gone for the head.


----------



## Jay Verkuilen

Tony Vargas said:


> I suspect it wasn't an accident.  It  may have been selection bias or confirmation bias, for instance.  Myself, I loved 4e (like I have 1e & 3.5 - a bit less than 1e, if we're feeding sibling rivalries), despised M:tG ("Tragic: the Addiction"), only played tactical games like Battletech or Carwars when there was nothing else to do, and won't touch a video game (the last one I played was Asteroids), CRPG, or MMO.




Well yeah, there's always selection bias or confirmation and your anecdote cancels mine out.... 

The things that those players highlighted were specifically the "deck building" aspect of 4E chargen and other similar things. 




> 5e kept it in a side-bar, they just didn't dare attach a jargon term to it.  You could add a monster ability that kicked in 'when reduced to 1/2 hps' or worked vs targets that 'had taken at least half their hps in damage' quite easily.  It's just a little wordy, because no jargon.




You can certainly add it back in, but it's not really built into the game in a systematic fashion the way it was in 4E. There are no notable abilities or monsters that I can think of, at least off the top of my head. 




> Nod.  The first time we hit Paragon, it was like running full tilt into a gelatinous cube.   A few levels later it'd sped back up again. FWIW.  Character sheets in the on-line builder were weirdly inflated /and/ left out critical information, it was some egregiously bad formatting.  Prior to that all that made sheets long was printing out the full texts of powers & items available to the character - if you printed out the full texts of spells available to casters in any other ed, it'd've been far longer...




Yeah, definitely. The CB was a necessary evil, but evil it was. 



> I am, too, but, IMX, the longer a player being introduced to 4e had played earlier editions, and the earlier the editions they played, the more disequilibrium they experienced in learning 4e.  It was just too unfamiliar, and the experience of 'not getting' something you identify as having 'mastered' can be disconcerting.




Yes, definitely. I found it pretty disconcerting at first, in a kind of "uncanny valley" kind of way, particularly the early books. The later ones made more sense but the PHB had this giant list of "spells" with levels that didn't line up to what we'd been used to seeing for literally ever (and now again). There were magic items in the PHB, many of which seemed to bear little or no resemblance to classic items. There were tons of new concepts, most of which had no precedent or clear root in the prior game: Milestones (aka a game incentive to keep adventuring), skill challenges (decent-ish idea poorly implemented), this whole new kinda sketched out but never realized world, dumped alignment system, magic items that have highly limited power usage, every character being alike in terms of being a Vancian spellcaster, power sources, .... 

It was like Ozzy releasing rerecorded and heavily reimagined versions of Mr. Crowley and Crazy Train. 




> It was very much the "not-D&D D&D" in good ways as well as bad.




That's a pretty good summary. 

And a whole lot of older players _did_ leave---witness the fact that another game that's built on the 3.X chassis Found a pretty lucrative Path to the market....


----------



## Tony Vargas

Jay Verkuilen said:


> And a whole lot of older players _did_ leave---witness the fact that another game that's built on the 3.X chassis Found a pretty lucrative Path to the market....



And that was only the newer older players running to PF, the older older players got OSRIC, too.


----------



## Hussar

oh, what the hell.

To me, virtually all the criticisms of 4e are pretty much self-indulgent twaddle.  For evidence, I simply point to 5e and 5e's popularity.

There are almost no criticisms of 4e that you can make that don't equally apply to 5e.  Yet, 5e is heralded as the second coming of D&D and 4e gets pilloried.  FOR EXACTLY THE SAME STUFF.

HP's?  Guess what, there's no difference, really between 4e and 5e.  Sure, you don't have as much in combat healing in 5e as 4e, but, that's about the only difference.  Any "Schroedinger's HP" garbage equally applies because I can fail two death saves, be 1 HP of damage away from instantly being killed and 8 hours later, I'm not only better, but I'm completely undamaged.  

Arguments about the "level of abstraction" are just self serving.  Pick a point where "the abstraction is too much" and then ignore any counter argument.  It's intellectually bankrupt.  It's two smurfs arguing over who is more blue.  But, man, is it really, really important to make sure that your favorite edition just happens to fall within that "level of abstraction" and that other edition doesn't.  

MMO comparisons?  Yeah, guess what?  5e HAS encounter powers.  5e HAS abstract powers.  The argument was always, "Why can't my fighter do X any time he wants?"  Well, gee, I'm looking at the Battlemaster right now and every single issue you had with 4e exists right there in 5e.  

Look, I get not liking 4e.  That's groovy.  But, ffs, just admit that you don't like the edition and move on and quit trying to "prove" that there is anything of any actual substance to your dislike.  Revel in it.  You don't like it.  Great.  That is perfectly fine.  But, don't pretend that your dislike is somehow grounded in facts and if everyone would just "see" what you see, we'd all agree with you.  Because, otherwise, it's so hypocritical to sing hosannas to 5e while criticizing 4e.


----------



## Jay Verkuilen

billd91 said:


> Honestly, I think the bard still fulfills that role pretty well - Song of Rest offers bonus healing other characters are already spending some of their hit dice to heal.




Having played a bard, I find that ability largely superfluous in most circumstances. It's so small as to be relatively meaningless unless you take a lot of short rests and it barely scales. It's MUCH more useful in _Adventures in Middle Earth_, where healing is rare, as are long rests, so your hit dice are very helpful and getting more or less a free one every time you rest is useful. 

The kind of thing I'm thinking of is having the bard be able to activate your hit dice during combat, possibly with a "kicker" of some sort, say having the ability to use Bardic Inspiration (ugh... terrible name given that it's the same as Inspiration Inspiration) for healing too. 

Example of my thinking: The bard can use Bardic Inspiration. One use of Bardic Inspiration is to spend a hit die and add the Inspiration die to it. The character can spend 1 hit die per tier when Bardic Inspiration is used this way. Note that the bard has a pretty large supply of inspiration, particularly at mid to upper levels; it's the number of hit dice that is the limited resource. In this sense, the bard can't really drastically do anything you can't do yourself, although you're getting a bit of extra juice when the bard helps you and you get the benefit in combat. Correspondingly, I'd take Cure Wounds and Healing Word off the bard's list (though of course those could be "stolen" with Magical Secrets). 

Part of this comes from my tendency to run a cleric-less game but I also just really like things to feel different.


----------



## Tony Vargas

Hussar said:


> oh, what the hell.
> To me, virtually all the criticisms of 4e are pretty much self-indulgent twaddle.  For evidence, I simply point to 5e and 5e's popularity.
> There are almost no criticisms of 4e that you can make that don't equally apply to 5e.  Yet, 5e is heralded as the second coming of D&D and 4e gets pilloried.  FOR EXACTLY THE SAME STUFF.



 It's not exactly the same stuff - it's the same concept, but with very different levels of availability & effectiveness - complaints may have been phrased around the conceptual aspects, but they were not about them.

And, really, it was no different before 5e.  4e was criticized for things that 1e (dissociated mechanics!) and/or 3.5 (grid dependence!) had always done, too.



Hussar said:


> But, ffs, just admit that you don't like the edition and move on and quit trying to "prove" that there is anything of any actual substance to your dislike.



 There are very substantive differences between 4e & real D&D.  Class balance, dependability of encounter design guidelines, impact of magic items, genre fidelity, rewards for system mastery, difficulty of DMing, impact of pacing, handling of challenges other than combat, impact of progression, etc...
...they're just not things that are often complained of, directly.


----------



## Shasarak

Hussar said:


> To me, virtually all the criticisms of 4e are pretty much self-indulgent twaddle.  For evidence, I simply point to 5e and 5e's popularity.




So your logic is: because 5e is popular therefore 4e is popular?


----------



## Hussar

Shasarak said:


> So your logic is: because 5e is popular therefore 4e is popular?




No, my logic is, "If you're going to criticize something and something else does exactly the same thing, you should criticize that too."  If X bothers you, it shouldn't matter which edition it's from, it just bothers you.  But, that's not what happens.  It's, "4e is bad because it does X",  "But, edition Y does the same thing and that doesn't bother you so what's the problem?"  "NO, 4e suxxors and that other edition is fine because I like it".

Like I said, most of the criticisms are hypocritical and intellectually bankrupt.  If encounters powers bother you, fair enough.  But, don't then turn around and say that encounter powers are perfectly fine in another edition.  If fast healing is a problem, then it's a problem.  The "e" shouldn't matter.


----------



## darkbard

Shasarak said:


> Of course there are movies where the hero appears to get shot but does not just as there are movies where the hero does not look like they were shot but turns out that they were.   That is the whole point of Schrodinger, two events are possible and you dont know which one actually happened until afterwards.
> 
> I guess the bit that is particularly stupid to me is if the person in your example narrates that, rather then the bullet being stopped by the lead game token, he was not actually shot at all.




Well, individual aesthetic tastes are, notoriously, individual. I reckon, though, that there are instances where narration that "he was not actually shot at all" might work best. But, again, YMMV.



Saelorn said:


> There's a substantial difference between such false-deaths being a thing that _could_ happen, and being a thing that _must_ happen in every instance. Only the former is well-founded in both fiction and reality.
> 
> More to the point, the idea that reality could be inherently unfixed until the time of observation, is one which is _completely_ inconceivable. There is no possible reality which could correspond to such a thing. Whether the cat is dead or not is a fact which is _already_ true, regardless of whether we observe it. Whether or not that hit was substantially physical is already set in stone at the moment of impact, if that game world has _any_ semblance of similarity to any believable world.




My point is that in a game, until such things are actually determined through the outcome of play and game mechanics (which, in this case, won't happen until we see if the character dies of their wounds or if, being revived through some healing mechanic, they are able to continue along in play with little or no discernible effects as compared with "pre injury"), they are not set in stone. "Whoo, was I lucky, I was just struck by the flat of the blade, which knocked the wind out of me momentarily." "Good thing I drank that bitter herbal tea this morning, which must have counteracted that spider's poison." "Yes, my eyebrows and lashes are all singed off, but somehow that fireball's blast didn't catch me full on." Etc.

But I suspect you disagree with such a viewpoint if your previous statements on similar topics are any indication. To each their own.


----------



## Shasarak

Hussar said:


> No, my logic is, "If you're going to criticize something and something else does exactly the same thing, you should criticize that too."  If X bothers you, it shouldn't matter which edition it's from, it just bothers you.  But, that's not what happens.  It's, "4e is bad because it does X",  "But, edition Y does the same thing and that doesn't bother you so what's the problem?"  "NO, 4e suxxors and that other edition is fine because I like it".
> 
> Like I said, most of the criticisms are hypocritical and intellectually bankrupt.  If encounters powers bother you, fair enough.  But, don't then turn around and say that encounter powers are perfectly fine in another edition.  If fast healing is a problem, then it's a problem.  The "e" shouldn't matter.




I think before you throw around descriptions like hypocritical and intellectually bankrupt then you could at least provide quotes of the people you claim are saying that 4e suxxors and 5e roxxors.

Not that I expect you will when that strawman you built was demolished so spectacularly.  Bravo for that at least :clap:


----------



## The Crimson Binome

darkbard said:


> My point is that in a game, until such things are actually determined through the outcome of play and game mechanics (which, in this case, won't happen until we see if the character dies of their wounds or if, being revived through some healing mechanic, they are able to continue along in play with little or no discernible effects as compared with "pre injury"), they are not set in stone.



That's not possible, though. You can't have a world where such a thing would be the case. Reality always operates in straightforward causal processes. Not just our reality, but any conceivable reality.

Unless the rules _only_ describe a game, and _don't_ describe any underlying reality whatsoever, in which case why all the rigamarole? We don't need 300 pages of rules, if none of those rules actually mean anything.

Edit: Actually, please ignore the second part. We're getting way off topic here. The whole point of this tangent is just that hitting zero doesn't always mean you were actually injured in 4E, because those rules don't follow causal processes, which isn't under dispute by anyone. Why they would make such a decision is irrelevant right now.


----------



## Shasarak

darkbard said:


> Well, individual aesthetic tastes are, notoriously, individual. I reckon, though, that there are instances where narration that "he was not actually shot at all" might work best. But, again, YMMV.




I am sure that you are right.  In my experience an instance where they were never shot at all usually happens to the comic relief guy so if that is the type of character that you are playing then maybe that is the best description for why you can bounce back to your feet so quickly.



> My point is that in a game, until such things are actually determined through the outcome of play and game mechanics (which, in this case, won't happen until we see if the character dies of their wounds or if, being revived through some healing mechanic, they are able to continue along in play with little or no discernible effects as compared with "pre injury"), they are not set in stone. "Whoo, was I lucky, I was just struck by the flat of the blade, which knocked the wind out of me momentarily." "Good thing I drank that bitter herbal tea this morning, which must have counteracted that spider's poison." "Yes, my eyebrows and lashes are all singed off, but somehow that fireball's blast didn't catch me full on." Etc.
> 
> But I suspect you disagree with such a viewpoint if your previous statements on similar topics are any indication. To each their own.




The only problem that I would have with your descriptions would be the retro active tea drinking because that is the type of thing you should have given to the whole party.  You should never hog all the poison antidote to yourself.


----------



## darkbard

Saelorn said:


> That's not possible, though. You can't have a world where such a thing would be the case. Reality always operates in straightforward causal processes. Not just our reality, but any conceivable reality.




Look, I'm not a physicist, but it's my, admittedly incomplete, understanding of quantum physics that the things you claim are inconceivable are not only conceivable but so. Even things like cause and effect don't necessarily work temporally, sequentially according to what we expect.

I'm sure any particle physicists in the audience will correct me if my understanding is wrong.



> Unless the rules _only_ describe a game, and _don't_ describe any underlying reality whatsoever, in which case why all the rigamarole? We don't need 300 pages of rules, if none of those rules actually mean anything.




You, sir, have nailed it precisely. the rules _only_ describe a game, and we need them only as a means of consensus for playing that game.

The narration of what rules mean _in the fiction_ *can* be infinitely malleable. Some games support or even advocate for such malleability; others constrain it.

EDIT: Just saw your edit, after I posted this. Hope you don't take it amiss that I responded.


----------



## The Crimson Binome

darkbard said:


> You, sir, have nailed it precisely. the rules _only_ describe a game, and we need them only as a means of consensus for playing that game.
> 
> The narration of what rules mean _in the fiction_ *can* be infinitely malleable. Some games support or even advocate for such malleability; others constrain it.
> 
> EDIT: Just saw your edit, after I posted this. Hope you don't take it amiss that I responded.



Let this be the last of the topic, for this thread, because I think we are in agreement as to the root of the divide between 3E fans and 4E fans; which is that the fans of 3E want the rules to describe some sort of underlying reality, and the fans of 4E don't necessarily want that to be the case.



darkbard said:


> Look, I'm not a physicist, but it's my, admittedly incomplete, understanding of quantum physics that the things you claim are inconceivable are not only conceivable but so. Even things like cause and effect don't necessarily work temporally, sequentially according to what we expect.
> 
> I'm sure any particle physicists in the audience will correct me if my understanding is wrong.



I'm technically a rocket scientist, but my understanding of causality is that cause and effect are part of how time is defined. Time moves forward in the direction by which cause leads to effect. Perhaps that breaks down at the quantum level, but if it does, then I cannot imagine it; for my brain does _not_ work at the quantum level, and can only model temporal processes in one direction.

Does anyone remember what this thread was about before we went off on this tangent? Did we solve the question about whether miniatures are good or bad? Or does an argument against miniatures inherently constitute an attack against 4E?


----------



## Lanefan

Tony Vargas said:


> And the total absence of debilitating or lasting injuries, too.



Very true, which is why some 35 years ago we put in what amounted to a rudimentary (but persistently robust, as is turned out) wound/vitality system to our 1e games; which by extension brought in a rudimentary lasting-injuries system (magical curing doesn't work beyond a certain very low point if you've been badly hurt recently, until a length of time - mostly set by how badly you were hurt - has passed).



> The explanation of hps going back to the 1e DMG, combined with the system eschewing any sort of wound spiral or lasting injury, makes it clear that it can't be modeling any too-serious/difficult-to-recover-function-after injuries, right up to actual death.  Its unrealistic, of course, but, having accepted it ...



But that's just it - some of us didn't accept it, right from day 1...  







> actually more consistent to allow hp recovery in a short time - second wind, HD/Surges, martial healing, non-physical damage, &c.



 ...which is why we don't accept any of this stuff either.



			
				MichaelSomething said:
			
		

> Is that a knock against wands of cure -blank- wounds and/or healing surges??



I hope so, as both are bad things.



			
				pemerton said:
			
		

> In LotR, JRRT is ambivalent about Frodo's fate after being stabbed with a troll spear. It turns out that Frodo is OK.



As fate would have it I just this week re-read Fellowship, and what you're seeing as ambivalence is more Tolkein's way of putting us in the rest of the characters' shoes for a moment to provide a bit of tension, and to let us-the-readers join in not being sure if Frodo - the whole reason they're out here in the first place - is alive or dead.

Were that an event in an RPG Frodo's player would know he's at -2 and down for the count after that hit and might die if left untended, but can be saved with some reasonably quick aid - which is what happens in the book too.

Lan-"in the book it's a boss orc that gets Frodo, in the movie it's the cave troll"-efan


----------



## pemerton

Lanefan said:


> Were that an event in an RPG Frodo's player would know he's at -2 and down for the count after that hit and might die if left untended



Says who? That's a question of system design. In 4e the player knows that death saves have to be rolled, but doesn't know - anymore than the rest of the table - whether the mithril stopped the blow or rather skewered the PC to death.



Shasarak said:


> I guess the bit that is particularly stupid to me is if the person in your example narrates that, rather then the bullet being stopped by the lead game token, he was not actually shot at all.



The bullet hits a cloak, or a sleeve, or . . ., and the target faints/swoons from the shock.



Shasarak said:


> there are the other characters with more hps who can not be killed by any one blow with a sword. Even a blow from an Ogre will not be enough to take them down with a single strike. And when one of those characters only have 1hp remaining your narration that they are "fine and dandy" is ludicrous.



They move at full speed. They can still beat that ogre in an arm wrestle. Etc. Nothing in the fiction of the game suggests that they are injured, or even tired. The contrast in this respect with a system like RQ, or RM, or even a non-simulationist system like Cortex+ Heroic (where your opponent gets to put your physical stress die into their die pool), is pretty marked.


----------



## pemerton

Jay Verkuilen said:


> There were tons of new concepts, most of which had no precedent or clear root in the prior game
> 
> <snip>
> 
> dumped alignment system



Frankly, it seemed like a reversion to classic law vs chaos (with the old "neutral" split into Good, Unaligned and Evil).



Jay Verkuilen said:


> power sources



I think 3E had the concept of arcane vs divine magic, and also of non-magical extraordinary abilities.



Jay Verkuilen said:


> the PHB had this giant list of "spells" with levels that didn't line up to what we'd been used to seeing for literally ever



In RQ spells don't have "levels". In RM, the level of a spell corresponds (roughly) to the character level at which it can be used (a bit like 4e). To me, this seems similar to being weirded out by 3E compared to (say) Hero because in Hero different abilities have variable points costs whereas in 3E all feats have the same cost ("1 slot").

If "not D&D" = "doesn't use some version of the classic spells by level table", then D&D is being defined in a _very_ prescriptive and (I would say) rather surface-level way.

But in any event, these changes you point to don't really seem to show that 4e is MMO-ish or M:tG-ish.

(And these things are strange. 5e radically revises the spells-per-level table, and the damage expressions for spells eg fireball is not 1d6 per level, nor 5d6 or 6d6 - which was its generic amount (eg from wand or scroll) in AD&D, but no one seem to find that weird but me.)


----------



## Tony Vargas

Lanefan said:


> Very true, which is why some 35 years ago we put in what amounted to a rudimentary (but persistently robust, as is turned out) wound/vitality system to our 1e games; which by extension brought in a rudimentary lasting-injuries system



 Thanks, that makes the point:  you actually were concerned with realism, and changed that fundamentally unrealistic sub-system to suit.





> As fate would have it I just this week re-read Fellowship, and what you're seeing as ambivalence is more Tolkein's way of putting us in the rest of the characters' shoes for a moment to provide a bit of tension, and to let us-the-readers join in not being sure if Frodo - the whole reason they're out here in the first place - is alive or dead.



 Yep, I didn't get the choice of 'ambivalence,' either.  But it is an example of the kind of thing that happens in genre - heck, in fiction - all the time.  And, of D&D hp systems, new-fangled death saves handle it much better than old-school death's door, because there is actual uncertainty.  
A Shrodinger's Injury.



> Were that an event in an RPG Frodo's player would know he's at -2 and down for the count after that hit and might die if left untended, but can be saved with some reasonably quick aid



 In AD&D, death would have been certain without aid, and a week (very inconvenient in Moria, presumably) of rest required if he survived

The whole armor saving your life, but not leaving you untouched, thing is non-existent in classic D&D (3e Fortification is the closest thing I can think of - of course, requiring magic).  Systems where armor reduces damage come closer to literal simulation of that, but Frodo wouldn't have presented as fatally wounded in them.


----------



## Tony Vargas

pemerton said:


> If "not D&D" = "doesn't use some version of the classic spells by level table", then D&D is being defined in a _very_ prescriptive and (I would say) rather surface-level way.



 Except for the 'If,' that is correct.  Its about familiarity.

Ok, it's not just spell tables, but the lack of them was really noticeable.   In any other ed, a glance at spell progression gives you a rough, immediate, idea of the class.


----------



## Jay Verkuilen

pemerton said:


> Frankly, it seemed like a reversion to classic law vs chaos (with the old "neutral" split into Good, Unaligned and Evil).




Sort of. But it was one change among _many_. 



> I think 3E had the concept of arcane vs divine magic, and also of non-magical extraordinary abilities.




Yes, it did, and that goes back all the way to the beginning of the game to some degree. Again, yet another change. 




> In RQ spells don't have "levels". In RM, the level of a spell corresponds (roughly) to the character level at which it can be used (a bit like 4e). To me, this seems similar to being weirded out by 3E compared to (say) Hero because in Hero different abilities have variable points costs whereas in 3E all feats have the same cost ("1 slot").
> 
> If "not D&D" = "doesn't use some version of the classic spells by level table", then D&D is being defined in a _very_ prescriptive and (I would say) rather surface-level way.




Hero is a totally different game family! Expectations in a totally different game are that, well, things are different. 4E purported to be the same game, new edition. 




> (And these things are strange. 5e radically revises the spells-per-level table, and the damage expressions for spells eg fireball is not 1d6 per level, nor 5d6 or 6d6 - which was its generic amount (eg from wand or scroll) in AD&D, but no one seem to find that weird but me.)




Those seem like fairly marginal changes to me. 




> But in any event, these changes you point to don't really seem to show that 4e is MMO-ish or M:tG-ish.




I wasn't really making that argument per se. Things like the action economy and movement rules with the expectation that play would be on a grid, power choice being like deck building, much more defined roles that resemble character roles in MMOs, and so on, have all been mentioned already

I'm noting that 4E had _many_ changes to D&D's core constructions. Each one on its own might have been... meh, OK. However, the sum total of the changes was very large. There were people who really loved those changes (you, presumably, several others here clearly) but a lot of folks felt they went too far in total, even if there were parts of it they liked. 

I cited the notion of the family resemblance before, with 4E clearly being quite a bit different from the rest of the D&D family. For another example not involving games, consider a longstanding band that's had an album that was _markedly_ different in many ways from the prior albums. An established fanbase is often not happy in circumstances like these. There's an adage that a band rarely survives the departure of its lead singer. Or an established restaurant that was known as for good pub 'n grub all of a sudden deciding to shift focus to experimental haute cuisine. 

Of course there are examples to the contrary, but the general rule isn't a bad one: Shifting key aspects of an identity often alienate existing fans and often do not attract additional ones.


----------



## billd91

Tony Vargas said:


> The whole armor saving your life, but not leaving you untouched, thing is non-existent in classic D&D (3e Fortification is the closest thing I can think of - of course, requiring magic).  Systems where armor reduces damage come closer to literal simulation of that, but Frodo wouldn't have presented as fatally wounded in them.




That depends on exactly how abstractly you want to look at it. In 3e, had that orc chief rolled a crit threat and failed to hit with the confirmation, you could argue the armor saved Frodo's life in a way that works with the depiction in the book. It was a hit, maybe the orc rolled high damage, but didn't crit which would probably have killed the hobbit. 

But even in 1e, considering the attack roll didn't necessarily represent a single thrust of a spear but a minute's worth of combat, that round of attacks directed at Frodo could have included multiple attacks (if the orc was a high enough level) - at least one of which hit and at least one of which missed - and leave Frodo in a similar condition, wounded but saved by his armor.

The other realization is that mithril armor of LotR quality *could* be credibly represented as magical, particularly given the subtlety of some magic in LotR.


----------



## Jay Verkuilen

Tony Vargas said:


> Except for the 'If,' that is correct.  Its about familiarity.
> 
> Ok, it's not just spell tables, but the lack of them was really noticeable.   In any other ed, a glance at spell progression gives you a rough, immediate, idea of the class.




Exactly. I'm not saying that 4E's way was bad. They did it the way they did it, but it's one of _many, many_ expectations from prior editions that were altered. Spell levels running from 1 to 9 was a big one. Alter a few things here and there, especially on the margins? Most people adapt. 3E was a pretty drastic change for many folks but 4E was... wow. Despite all those changes, there were things that felt like D&D and I'm not saying it was a bad game (despite my overall evaluation being negative).


----------



## Jay Verkuilen

billd91 said:


> That depends on exactly how abstractly you want to look at it. In 3e, had that orc chief rolled a crit threat and failed to hit with the confirmation, you could argue the armor saved Frodo's life in a way that works with the depiction in the book. It was a hit, maybe the orc rolled high damage, but didn't crit which would probably have killed the hobbit.




D&D really doesn't have a good way to represent "he's stunned and out of the fight". Your crit example works well: He got knocked down to 0 hit points but wasn't killed because the crit didn't confirm. Of course, the way hit points work has some "Murphy's Rules" aspects. This is but one. 



> The other realization is that mithril armor of LotR quality *could* be credibly represented as magical, particularly given the subtlety of some magic in LotR.




IMO this is a good interpretation. The mithril coat is a magic item. In D&D this usually is run as "has a higher AC" which has a uniform and evident effect. However, the way it's described in LotR, it also has other properties, such as "protecting from what would have been a death blow." 

LotR also tracks encumbrance... only Gimli wears armor or carries a shield due to the burdens of the road. D&D style systems aren't great at that.


----------



## Kobold Boots

Note one possible interpretation of hit points that worked for us and didn't require any real wound system.

The combat system represents combat.
HP are a measure of what can kill you in combat.
Therefore HP are abstracted such that they represent your experience in combat.  You can take more damage as you level because you're better at avoiding mortal damage.
Therefore when you hit zero, someone finally nailed you with that mortal blow.  Until then you can assume that damage was being soaked by armor or avoided by skill.

This is complicated by the popular use of the term critical, which for most means, oh it's more than a flesh wound but in terms of this view simply means that the attacker caught more of the defender than they would otherwise.

If you want to make the game more deadly you don't need to modify hit points.  You just need to create situations where zero hit points is an absolute term instead of doing X amount of HP in damage.  An arm break should make a combatant functionally less competent in combat and is worthy of being at 1/2 HP.  Anything that impacts mobility is worthy of being at zero due to making the target easier to hit.

Just two cents.


----------



## Jay Verkuilen

Kobold Boots said:


> HP are a measure of what can kill you in combat.
> Therefore HP are abstracted such that they represent your experience in combat.  You can take more damage as you level because you're better at avoiding mortal damage. <snip>




That can work for combat, but it can be problematic for situations like falling damage or, say, spell damage.


----------



## Kobold Boots

Jay Verkuilen said:


> That can work for combat, but it can be problematic for situations like falling damage or, say, spell damage.




Give me an example of spell damage you'd like modeled and I can give you the way to do it to stay consistent with the system as presented.

As to falling it's pretty simple really.

Choose a height beyond which it's pretty certain you're going to be immobilized or incapacitated due to impact.  
- In my estimation this is 15 feet unless you've got some sort of acrobatics/tumbing skill, 25 feet if so.
Fall of appropriate height drops you to some percentage of or 0 HP automatically and may provide an appropriate effect at the discretion of the DM.
- Tumbling mitigates some damage or avoids effect depending on how the DM works it out at his table.

Spell Damage types usually break down to the following.
- Direct damage - best suited for HP use as normal - This is combat, thus abstraction works.  Auto hit doesn't mean armor doesn't soak.
- AOE damage - best suited for HP use as normal - This is combat.  Don't stand in fire.
- Damage over Time - again, abstraction works, this is combat.  DoT doesn't mean that armor doesn't soak or you have good endurance or some other explanation.  Heck, part of being mortal in a fantasy world where magic exists could be that the more you're exposed to magic the more resistance you build up to it until you really decide to go off the deep end and play with things you really shouldn't.


----------



## Jay Verkuilen

Kobold Boots said:


> Give me an example of spell damage you'd like modeled and I can give you the way to do it to stay consistent with the system as presented.
> 
> As to falling it's pretty simple really.
> 
> Choose a height beyond which it's pretty certain you're going to be immobilized or incapacitated due to impact.
> - In my estimation this is 15 feet unless you've got some sort of acrobatics/tumbing skill, 25 feet if so.
> Fall of appropriate height drops you to some percentage of or 0 HP automatically and may provide an appropriate effect at the discretion of the DM.
> - Tumbling mitigates some damage or avoids effect depending on how the DM works it out at his table.




By that logic a dextrous fellow like a rogue should be pretty much OK. Often he's not whereas the fighter just says "meh." 



> Heck, part of being mortal in a fantasy world where magic exists could be that the more you're exposed to magic the more resistance you build up to it until you really decide to go off the deep end and play with things you really shouldn't.




Why are wizards so much more fragile then, even to magic damage?

I'm not saying you can't handle things this way or that it's a bad idea, but you'll need to do a good bit of work and alteration I'd think. 

Now 5E has some useful things, such as resistances (and the drastically underused vulnerability) and the ability to have high hit points and very low AC or vice versa. That can represent some useful diversity among creatures. 

As I said elsewhere, Monte Cook's point about hit points is that they allow things of pretty drastically different scale and underlying logic to exist on the same board. They're a little messy in the corners and when you move the fridge there are some roaches, but by and large they work fairly well.


----------



## Tony Vargas

pemerton said:


> I think 3E had the concept of arcane vs divine magic, and also of non-magical extraordinary abilities.



 3e explicitly called out some class (and monster abilities) as 'extraordinary' (EX) and others as supernatural (SU).  But, the division among Martial, Divine, and Arcane goes all the way back to Men & Magic, when the only classes were Fighter, Cleric, & Magic-user, respectively.  Likewise, the 4 Roles were just a formalization of the party-contributions of the Fighter, Cleric, Magic-user - and, eventually, in 3e, when SA replaced backstab, Rogue.



> In RQ spells don't have "levels". In RM, the level of a spell corresponds (roughly) to the character level at which it can be used (a bit like 4e). To me, this seems similar to being weirded out by 3E compared to (say) Hero because in Hero different abilities have variable points costs whereas in 3E all feats have the same cost ("1 slot").



 It's a fair thing to be weirded out by, in either case, really. 



> If "not D&D" = "doesn't use some version of the classic spells by level table", then D&D is being defined in a _very_ prescriptive and (I would say) rather surface-level way.



 Yes, it is.



> (And these things are strange. 5e radically revises the spells-per-level table, and the damage expressions for spells eg fireball is not 1d6 per level, nor 5d6 or 6d6 - which was its generic amount (eg from wand or scroll) in AD&D, but no one seem to find that weird but me.)



 Oh, I've seen lots of long-time & returning players find the damage-by-slot level, sparse high-level spells, and, particularly, the prep & cast spontaneously of neo-Vancian a little hard to wrap their expectations around.  
But, though it's a bit different, it's still a (slightly) different spells/level/day chart for each class, and traditional class imbalances are more or less intact.



Jay Verkuilen said:


> The things that those players highlighted were specifically the "deck building" aspect of 4E chargen and other similar things.



 You don't randomly draw 'power cards.'  There's no 'deck.'  A mid-level magic-user memorizing spells is closer to 'deck building' than anything in 4e chargen, and its still not very close...

...now the last edition of Gamma World, it had deck-building, which, very surprisingly, didn't suck much at all.  ;P  



> the PHB had this giant list of "spells" with levels that didn't line up to what we'd been used to seeing for literally ever



Yeah, unfamiliar.  Though, to be accurate, the PH1 did not have a giant list of spells, each class had a rather modest list of powers (only the Wizard's & Warlock's were "spells"), organized by the level at which you gained them, so when you were picking a power you only had to read through 2-6 selections.  It was a lot simpler than reading through /all/ the spells of a given class/level in 1e, and vastly simpler than sorting through the actually giant, giant list of spells in the 3e and 5e PHs, which are just every spell in the game, thrown into a giant alphabetical list.  The 5e version doesn't even do you the favor of listing the class(es) with the spell.  
And, it was far more intuitive for the level of the power to be the level at which your character could choose it, rather than approximately half the level at which you could acquire it, rounded up, except when it wasn't.

It's really a perfect example of how 4e was more accessible to new players, while freaking out older ones.



> There were magic items in the PHB, many of which seemed to bear little or no resemblance to classic items.



 Yep.  3e moved stuff from the DMG to the PH, including like all the combat rules, and, via make/buy made magic items into a player build resource - but left items in the DMG.  4e items in the PH was a straight-line trend from 3e.



> There were tons of new concepts, most of which had no precedent or clear root in the prior game: Milestones (aka a game incentive to keep adventuring), skill challenges, this whole new kinda sketched out but never realized world, dumped alignment system, magic items that have highly limited power usage



 Actually, all of those have precedents and/or roots in prior eds.  Magic items with limited usage n/day, 1/day, 1/week  or month, even, and any other sort of arbitrary proviso, were common in past eds.  The alignment system wasn't dumped, merely consolidated, the aligments new player found confusing/contradictory were folded into the more intuitive ones, 5 alignments instead of 9, but D&D had as few as 3 in the past, Blackmoor was a kinda sketched out but never realized world, skill challenges were a new mechanism but a solution to an old problem that the game had tried to tackle before, and the game had always /needed/ incentives to keep the party adventuring a 'whole day' rather than a 5MWD!



> every character being alike in terms of being a Vancian spellcaster, ....



 Yeah, that's "factually incorrect" (as we say around here, because lying is not against the CoC, but calling someone a liar is).  In 4e, only the Wizard was in any way Vancian (and, like the 3e & 5e wizards, 'prepared' rather than 'memorized' his spells, just only his daily spells & utilities).  And only arcane classes were casting spells.  

What you're really getting at is the common advancement structure - all classes had the same exp chart, as in 3e (so that was entirely precedented ) and 5e, but also the same advancement schedule in terms of bonuses, across the board (which 5e also kept, as proficiency, for some reason) and in terms of short- and long-rest-recharge resources, which was certainly rooted in the many limited-use abilities in the game's history, and had some precedent in the way 2e & 3e moved full casters to 9-level casting (formerly Clerics, Druids & Illusionist had only 7 spell levels).  

What was unprecedented was what all that helped enable:  the classes were much better-balanced (to be fair, less imbalanced) than ever before, or since.  




Jay Verkuilen said:


> D&D really doesn't have a good way to represent "he's stunned and out of the fight". Your crit example works well: He got knocked down to 0 hit points but wasn't killed because the crit didn't confirm. Of course, the way hit points work has some "Murphy's Rules" aspects. This is but one.
> IMO this is a good interpretation. The mithril coat is a magic item. In D&D this usually is run as "has a higher AC" which has a uniform and evident effect. However, the way it's described in LotR, it also has other properties, such as "protecting from what would have been a death blow."



 Yeah, 3e did get a few things that started to model armor protecting rather than just deflecting - Fortification, I mentioned, above, and the mithril coat could certainly have been a +X Mithral Chain Shirt of (sadly, IIRC, only 'Light') Fortification, but, sure, also crits w/confirm rolls (spears are x3, so yeah, ouch).  1e didn't, and 3e & 1e both have characters dropped below 0 on an inevitable death countdown.  5e doesn't confirm crits, but it at least has the chance of a dropped character recovering on his own... after d4 hrs... so not actually 'fatally wounded,' as it turns out.

Those're all still pretty weak, though, compared to a mechanism like FATE 'consequences' which, of course, very consciously model the kind of dramatic treatment of injuries you see constantly in examples like the above, across many 'action' genres, not just fantasy, or armor that absorbs damage and separate unconsciousness & death tracking of damage, like Fantasy Hero (resistant defenses, STUN, BOD), so you can be unconscious but in no danger of death or conscious & fighting though mortally wounded (both things that don't happen in D&D without 'special abilities', but happen in fiction, and, heck, reality).



> LotR also tracks encumbrance... only Gimli wears armor or carries a shield due to the burdens of the road. D&D style systems aren't great at that.



 I seem to remember carefully toting up encumbrance in 10th-of-a-pound 'gp' detail, back in the day.


----------



## Kobold Boots

Jay Verkuilen said:


> By that logic a dextrous fellow like a rogue should be pretty much OK. Often he's not whereas the fighter just says "meh."




Within the context of how the system is presented the fractional damage rule puts the rogue and fighter on the same par initially where the rogue may indeed have the tumbling skill and fare better in shorter falls.  The warrior in heavier armor would be screwed if they got pushed off a 15 foot landing.



> Why are wizards so much more fragile then, even to magic damage?




In this system because they are not combat trained.  They are magic trained  Take a level of fighter, less of an issue.  As far as magic damage goes, it's still damage, where it comes from is less of an issue it's how you compensate for it which would be factored in to classes that spend more time focused on combat.  The magic user should focus on damage mitigation through wards and other magical defenses.



> I'm not saying you can't handle things this way or that it's a bad idea, but you'll need to do a good bit of work and alteration I'd think.




Possibly, but not as much as you may think.  Mages would focus on being harder to hit and that is where the AC abstraction comes in.  Classes with higher HP focus on HP abstraction.  Insofar as the system progresses the AC vs. HP discussion is where the system tradeoff mechanic would need to be put in and that's where the work would need to be. (High AC plus High HP needs to be hard to get to without some serious trade offs)



> Now 5E has some useful things, such as resistances (and the drastically underused vulnerability) and the ability to have high hit points and very low AC or vice versa. That can represent some useful diversity among creatures.
> 
> As I said elsewhere, Monte Cook's point about hit points is that they allow things of pretty drastically different scale and underlying logic to exist on the same board. They're a little messy in the corners and when you move the fridge there are some roaches, but by and large they work fairly well.




Agreed overall.


----------



## Jay Verkuilen

Tony Vargas said:


> Yeah, 3e did get a few things that started to model armor protecting rather than just deflecting - Fortification, I mentioned, above, and the mithril coat could certainly have been a +X Mithral Chain Shirt of (sadly, IIRC, only 'Light') Fortification, but, sure, also crits w/confirm rolls (spears are x3, so yeah, ouch).  1e didn't, and 3e & 1e both have characters dropped below 0 on an inevitable death countdown.  5e doesn't confirm crits, but it at least has the chance of a dropped character recovering on his own... after d4 hrs... so not actually 'fatally wounded,' as it turns out.




1E/2E had the widely used -10 rule. 





> Those're all still pretty weak, though, compared to a mechanism like FATE 'consequences' which, of course, very consciously model the kind of dramatic treatment of injuries you see constantly in examples like the above, across many 'action' genres, not just fantasy, or armor that absorbs damage and separate unconsciousness & death tracking of damage, like Fantasy Hero (resistant defenses, STUN, BOD), so you can be unconscious but in no danger of death or conscious & fighting though mortally wounded (both things that don't happen in D&D without 'special abilities', but happen in fiction,




Yes, many other games have them in various forms. The closest the D&D family has gotten is the Vitality/Wounds system in Star Wars D20. I used that in my 3.X campaign, though it wasn't super well integrated into the system and could be a bit annoying at times. Still, it reflected the rather pulpy feel I was going for. 

But with the general exception of 4E, D&D has stuck to its war-game roots and stayed away from effects of injuries or statuses. I liked the idea of many of the 4E status effects but felt that the sheer number was one of the big reasons for slowdown. 



> and, heck, reality).




Oh Ye Gods are the consequences of injury IRL something else and they end up being the gift that keeps on giving, too. 




> I seem to remember carefully toting up encumbrance in 10th-of-a-pound 'gp' detail, back in the day.




Oh yeah, and I occasionally enforce them but I don't tend to count up every last point.


----------



## Tony Vargas

Jay Verkuilen said:


> 1E/2E had the widely used -10 rule.



 Which doesn't work for modeling a character dropped, but who is saved from a mortal wound by his nifty elf armor.  Once you're in negatives, you've been mortally wounded, and must be saved, or die with a minute (2e) or 10 (1e).



> But with the general exception of 4E, D&D has stuck to its war-game roots and stayed away from effects of injuries or statuses. I liked the idea of many of the 4E status effects but felt that the sheer number was one of the big reasons for slowdown.



3e had like 40 named conditions.  4e had 18.  5e trimmed that down all the way down to 15.



> Oh Ye Gods are the consequences of injury IRL something else and they end up being the gift that keeps on giving, too.



 'Realism Kills' used to be my tagline on an old RPG BBS.


----------



## Lanefan

Jay Verkuilen said:


> LotR also tracks encumbrance... only Gimli wears armor or carries a shield



And Boromir, for as long as he lasts... 







> due to the burdens of the road. D&D style systems aren't great at that.



D&D systems can be just fine at that but it needs players and DMs willing to rather harshly enforce it and live with the results.


----------



## Kobold Boots

Lanefan said:


> And Boromir, for as long as he lasts... D&D systems can be just fine at that but it needs players and DMs willing to rather harshly enforce it and live with the results.




Agreed.  Encumbrance rules exist to paper napkin this sort of thing.


----------



## Shasarak

pemerton said:


> Says who? That's a question of system design. In 4e the player knows that death saves have to be rolled, but doesn't know - anymore than the rest of the table - whether the mithril stopped the blow or rather skewered the PC to death.




Well yes obviously that is exactly the point.  No one at the table knows until someone opens the box to observe how mad the Schrodinger's cat is.



> They move at full speed. They can still beat that ogre in an arm wrestle. Etc. Nothing in the fiction of the game suggests that they are injured, or even tired. The contrast in this respect with a system like RQ, or RM, or even a non-simulationist system like Cortex+ Heroic (where your opponent gets to put your physical stress die into their die pool), is pretty marked.




RQ and RM are not, afterall, very realistic.  It turns out that DnD models real life much better then those other games because the human body does keep operating at close to 100% until it cant.  Exactly like HPs would suggest.


----------



## Kobold Boots

Shasarak said:


> RQ and RM are not, afterall, very realistic.  It turns out that DnD models real life much better then those other games because the human body does keep operating at close to 100% until it cant.  Exactly like HPs would suggest.




The pain of agreeing with this statement is that when you use it in correlation with D&D it relies on your perceived level of abstraction being similar to the person you're using it in conversation with.  If the other guy doesn't see HP as including effects like fatigue and advanced combat skills training to offset minor injuries to arms and legs and such.. then it's a much harder sell.

I, for one agree with it.

KB


----------



## Jay Verkuilen

Lanefan said:


> And Boromir, for as long as he lasts... D&D systems can be just fine at that but it needs players and DMs willing to rather harshly enforce it and live with the results.




I forgot Boromir wore armor, too. 

I think the thing about encumbrance in D&D is that it doesn't really reflect the effect, which is an incremental slowing down, not a "you're fine until THIS threshold, after which you're screwed on movement". As far as I recall, D&D has really never had a fatigue system of note, although there's probably something in _al Qadim_ or _Dark Sun_. 4E drained healing surges, which was a good way, I think. 5E has the fatigue scale, though they way they set it up is decidedly problematic in a variety of ways. 

I'm NOT saying most games should run this way---I don't want to run most games that way---but something that's supposed to be super gritty in the way that LotR is, where you seriously weigh the tradeoff of the protection of armor versus the grinding fatigue that comes with it? Absolutely.


----------



## Jay Verkuilen

Tony Vargas said:


> Which doesn't work for modeling a character dropped, but who is saved from a mortal wound by his nifty elf armor.  Once you're in negatives, you've been mortally wounded, and must be saved, or die with a minute (2e) or 10 (1e).



Not really, though I guess it might with certain description. But I generally think that a game that has Body and Stun would reflect that better. Frodo's Stun was exceeded but the mithril shirt protected him from the Body damage. 



> 3e had like 40 named conditions.  4e had 18.  5e trimmed that down all the way down to 15.




Yes, there were more conditions but they weren't dished out as regularly or synergized with the way they were in 4E. There was a reason 4E benefitted greatly from condition tracking chips on minis and the last thing in most combat turns involved saving against all the "save ends" conditions. High level 3E had other slowdowns, of course. At one point we used to play in a college conference room that we weren't _technically_ supposed to have access to and used the chalkboard on the wall to keep track of spell durations! 




> 'Realism Kills' used to be my tagline on an old RPG BBS.




Heh, that's true.


----------



## Tony Vargas

Jay Verkuilen said:


> Yes, there were more conditions but they weren't dished out as regularly or synergized with the way they were in 4E. There was a reason 4E benefitted greatly from condition tracking chips on minis and the last thing in most combat turns involved saving against all the "save ends" conditions. High level 3E had other slowdowns, of course. At one point we used to play in a college conference room that we weren't _technically_ supposed to have access to and used the chalkboard on the wall to keep track of spell durations!



There wasn't much synergy among conditions, that I recall, overlap, more often.  Oh, you're slowed /and/ immobilized, slowed doesn't really matter now.  And, yeah, the sheer number means something - I couldn't say the same about synergy in 3e, because I can't remember half the 40 conditions, I can remember /most/ of 4e or 5e's less-than-half-that conditions, and even how they work (when I'm not getting them confused, that is, which is a danger of running two eds of the same game!).  
But it wasn't so much in how often they came up, it was that they didn't stay long.  End of Next Turn or Save Ends, typically, so they were ultimately another tactical dimension, not a "you've nothing to do for the next hour or two, might as well get up pizza" 'Save or Suck.' (5e's similar, in some instances, because it allows repeated saves.)  If you played a leader and had any way of removing or compensating for conditions, you'd want to keep track of all of them.    If you were under a condition, there might be actions you'd want to take only after you got rid of it, because getting rid of it was not all that unlikely - not like making a DC 29 save with a +11, or out-lasting a 1 min/level duration in 6-second combat rounds, unless there was a friendly dispel magic or somesuch in the offing, you'd just adjust your grinder to the condition as best you could and keep grinding.  Which is less trouble to track, I suppose.

If you didn't want so much of it, you'd throw down monsters that didn't impose so many conditions, as a DM, and throw around fewer, yourself, as a player (even controllers could be effective without constantly tossing around fiddly conditions that required tracking - straightforward zones that sat there all combat, for instance, that you then push/slide victims* into).  Same goes for between-turn actions.  You could heavily emphasize or completely eschew them in a build.









* I meant enemies - monsters, even!  Yeah, monstrous enemies, that are bad, and have it coming, yeah...


----------



## Mistwell

Cergorach said:


> While 3(.5)E didn't require miniatures, it was the most popular edition since the 80s. 5E still needs a lot of sales to catch up to that.




5e sales exceeded 3(.5) sales last year. WOTC confirmed it in an article.


----------



## Shasarak

Kobold Boots said:


> The pain of agreeing with this statement is that when you use it in correlation with D&D it relies on your perceived level of abstraction being similar to the person you're using it in conversation with.  If the other guy doesn't see HP as including effects like fatigue and advanced combat skills training to offset minor injuries to arms and legs and such.. then it's a much harder sell.
> 
> I, for one agree with it.
> 
> KB




I think my main problem is when the narration is dissociated from the mechanics, so when you were hit with a sword and the narration is that you were "damaged" when you dodged out of the way of the sword or if your character is down to their last hp and you are describing them as being fine and dandy.

I mean I know we are all pretending to be magic elves riding unicorns but there is no need to be absurd about it.


----------



## pemerton

Tony Vargas said:


> Except for the 'If,' that is correct.  Its about familiarity.
> 
> Ok, it's not just spell tables, but the lack of them was really noticeable.   In any other ed, a glance at spell progression gives you a rough, immediate, idea of the class.



There was a chart, near the front, that did this for all classes. (They shared the same chart.) I remember it was one of the first things I looked at!



Tony Vargas said:


> You don't randomly draw 'power cards.'  There's no 'deck.'  A mid-level magic-user memorizing spells is closer to 'deck building' than anything in 4e chargen, and its still not very close



Agreed.



Shasarak said:


> RQ and RM are not, afterall, very realistic.  It turns out that DnD models real life much better then those other games because the human body does keep operating at close to 100% until it cant.  Exactly like HPs would suggest.



As someone who has various sorts of ankle and knee injuries that have slowed me down but never created any risk of killing me, I can't agree with this.



Shasarak said:


> I think my main problem is when the narration is dissociated from the mechanics, so when you were hit with a sword and the narration is that you were "damaged" when you dodged out of the way of the sword or if your character is down to their last hp and you are describing them as being fine and dandy.



I'm talking about what the rules tell us. The character who is down to his/her last hp is not penalised on athletic endeavours, can walk all day without tiring, has no reduction in the load that s/he can carry, can dodge a disintegrate ray as well as the next person, etc. Nothing in these elements of the system tells me that this person has been hurt or worn out in any way.



Kobold Boots said:


> If the other guy doesn't see HP as including effects like fatigue and advanced combat skills training to offset minor injuries to arms and legs and such.. then it's a much harder sell.



I don't think any edition of D&D has fatigue causing hp loss. In 5e it's a whole separate subsystem. (In fact many such: barbarians running out of "rage juice" is separate from a barbarian getting tired from running is separate from a barbarian getting worn down by a skilled opposing combatant.)


----------



## Hussar

Shasarak said:


> I think my main problem is when the narration is dissociated from the mechanics, so when you were hit with a sword and the narration is that you were "damaged" when you dodged out of the way of the sword or if your character is down to their last hp and you are describing them as being fine and dandy.
> 
> I mean I know we are all pretending to be magic elves riding unicorns but there is no need to be absurd about it.




The issue with that comes when someone tries to insist that their narration, whatever it is, is supported by dnd mechanics. It never has been. We’ve just internalized our own narratives to the point where they become no longer examined. 

You cannot criticize any hp loss narration in DnD based on the mechanics because the mechanics tell you absolutely nothing. All the mechanics say is you have lost hit points. There can be no dissociation when there is nothing to dissociate from in the first place.


----------



## Tony Vargas

pemerton said:


> There was a chart, near the front, that did this for all classes. (They shared the same chart.) I remember it was one of the first things I looked at!



 Exactly, you couldn't tell from that which class was better.  In 1e you could look at the spell tables and know that the class with 9th level spells was better than the ones that only went up to 7th, &c, even before looking at the lists. That's disconcerting.



> As someone who has various sorts of ankle and knee injuries that have slowed me down but never created any risk of killing me, I can't agree with this.



 I suspect it was a joke.  



> I don't think any edition of D&D has fatigue causing hp loss



 I feel like there was a 'forced march' rule somewhere that caused the loss of some % of hps...


----------



## pemerton

Tony Vargas said:


> I feel like there was a 'forced march' rule somewhere that caused the loss of some % of hps...



In 1st ed AD&D it could cause level loss - so you can get worse at fighting because you're tired from walking/running, but not because you got hit on the head with a mace? Or (more plausibly) hit point loss doesn't correspond to being hit on the head with a mace.


----------



## Shasarak

pemerton said:


> As someone who has various sorts of ankle and knee injuries that have slowed me down but never created any risk of killing me, I can't agree with this.




The body is pretty good but it is not perfect.  I am sure that if you were in risk of being killed that you would find out how much those supposed knee injuries really slowed you down.  



> I'm talking about what the rules tell us. The character who is down to his/her last hp is not penalised on athletic endeavours, can walk all day without tiring, has no reduction in the load that s/he can carry, can dodge a disintegrate ray as well as the next person, etc. Nothing in these elements of the system tells me that this person has been hurt or worn out in any way.




The rules do tell you that your character has been hurt.  And that stat is not measured by your strength or encumbrance.


----------



## Shasarak

Hussar said:


> The issue with that comes when someone tries to insist that their narration, whatever it is, is supported by dnd mechanics. It never has been. We’ve just internalized our own narratives to the point where they become no longer examined.
> 
> You cannot criticize any hp loss narration in DnD based on the mechanics because the mechanics tell you absolutely nothing. All the mechanics say is you have lost hit points. There can be no dissociation when there is nothing to dissociate from in the first place.




If there is nothing to dissociate from then why is your character losing hp?

In any game that I have played in there is always some kind of link between narrative and mechanic so I would be interested to hear your experience.


----------



## Hussar

Shasarak said:


> If there is nothing to dissociate from then why is your character losing hp?
> 
> In any game that I have played in there is always some kind of link between narrative and mechanic so I would be interested to hear your experience.




The link is entirely free form though.  I can say that strawberries explode from you every time you are hit and there is nothing in the mechanics that would contradict that.  You lost HP because of a successful attack. That's it.


----------



## Shasarak

Hussar said:


> The link is entirely free form though.  I can say that strawberries explode from you every time you are hit and there is nothing in the mechanics that would contradict that.  You lost HP because of a successful attack. That's it.




In my mind, if you lose hp because of a successful attack then that hp loss is associated with that successful attack.  And, just as an example, if that successful attack was a Troll bite then I would expect the description to be essentially Troll attacks with claws and bite, hits with bite, bite does X hp damage.

So what I am wondering is where the part of that sequence does the hp damage become disassociated?


----------



## Hussar

Shasarak said:


> In my mind, if you lose hp because of a successful attack then that hp loss is associated with that successful attack.  And, just as an example, if that successful attack was a Troll bite then I would expect the description to be essentially Troll attacks with claws and bite, hits with bite, bite does X hp damage.
> 
> So what I am wondering is where the part of that sequence does the hp damage become disassociated?




You could certainly narrate it that way.  Of course you can.  That's the point.  You can narrate anything you want to because the mechanics are not actually tied to anything in the game world.  Did the troll bite you?  Where?  How hard?  Now, referencing the mechanics, back up your narration?  All that actually hapened is your character lost X HP.  Since HP don't actually mean anything and combat is completely abstract, any narration you choose is always 100% fine as far as the mechanics go.

Or, put it another way, I insist that your troll bite causes strawberries to explode from my nose.  Prove me wrong using the mechanics.


----------



## Sadras

Shasarak said:


> In my mind, if you lose hp because of a successful attack then that hp loss is associated with that successful attack.  And, just as an example, if that successful attack was a Troll bite then I would expect the description to be essentially Troll attacks with claws and bite, hits with bite, bite does X hp damage.
> 
> So what I am wondering is where the part of that sequence does the hp damage become disassociated?




Despite the fact that a particular weapon might do slashing or piercing damage I have often narrated that the hit point loss came from the wind being knocked out of the PC as the flat of the blade or the pommel of the sword struck him/her across the chest. So there was no blood loss, no skin was torn, no injury/wound was sustained - but the foe's attack was successful in some way and hit points were lost and that makes sense in my mind.

I'm not saying your way is wrong, where every successful attack draws blood, but for me to describe every attack against a PC like that would break immersion for our table.


----------



## Shasarak

Hussar said:


> You could certainly narrate it that way.  Of course you can.  That's the point.  You can narrate anything you want to because the mechanics are not actually tied to anything in the game world.  Did the troll bite you?  Where?  How hard?  Now, referencing the mechanics, back up your narration?  All that actually hapened is your character lost X HP.  Since HP don't actually mean anything and combat is completely abstract, any narration you choose is always 100% fine as far as the mechanics go.




Did the Troll bite?  Well yes it must have because it was a successful bite attack that did X bite damage to you.  So therefore the combat is not completely abstract because any logical narrative should include those mechanical details.



> Or, put it another way, I insist that your troll bite causes strawberries to explode from my nose.  Prove me wrong using the mechanics.




I am not sure that anyone was arguing that point.  Is there supposed to be a particular place on your character where HPs come from?  Do HPs have a flavour or do they all taste like chicken?  I am sure that games that Rule Quest have a set definition that a leg has X HP but I dont remember that rule in DnD except for maybe the Critical Hit location tables back in ADnD.

So I can not prove that a Troll bite would or would not cause strawberries to explode from your nose just like I can not prove that your character actually has to go to the toilet.  I do have an opinion on both of those scenarios but it is entirely of my own devise with no official rules guidance.


----------



## pemerton

Hussar said:


> You could certainly narrate it that way.  Of course you can.  That's the point.  You can narrate anything you want to because the mechanics are not actually tied to anything in the game world.  Did the troll bite you?  Where?  How hard?  Now, referencing the mechanics, back up your narration?  All that actually hapened is your character lost X HP.  Since HP don't actually mean anything and combat is completely abstract, any narration you choose is always 100% fine as far as the mechanics go.



I agree with this, and have XPed it.



Hussar said:


> I insist that your troll bite causes strawberries to explode from my nose.  Prove me wrong using the mechanics.



Getting hit doesn't replenish rations?


----------



## Shasarak

Sadras said:


> Despite the fact that a particular weapon might do slashing or piercing damage I have often narrated that the hit point loss came from the wind being knocked out of the PC as the flat of the blade or the pommel of the sword struck him/her across the chest. So there was no blood loss, no skin was torn, no injury/wound was sustained - but the foe's attack was successful in some way and hit points were lost and that makes sense in my mind.
> 
> I'm not saying your way is wrong, where every successful attack draws blood, but for me to describe every attack against a PC like that would break immersion for our table.




I find that if you are using a system where everyone heals up over night then this type of description is logical.

For me I find that if my character is at say half HP and the Cleric comes around offering to cast Cure Light Wounds or use a Healing Kit that actually having a wound that I can get healed makes more sense in my mind.  If I am just winded then it makes it seem less dangerous and therefore less heroic.


----------



## Sadras

Shasarak said:


> I find that if you are using a system where everyone heals up over night then this type of description is logical.
> 
> For me I find that if my character is at say half HP and the Cleric comes around offering to cast Cure Light Wounds or use a Healing Kit that actually having a wound that I can get healed makes more sense in my mind.  If I am just winded then it makes it seem less dangerous and therefore less heroic.




Fair point. I generally use a mix of descriptors in combat because either of those things can happen (overnight resting, magical healing) and then in 5e there is also spending HD to heal or using a medical kit. And this again because HP is a combination of factors.


----------



## Shasarak

Sadras said:


> Fair point. I generally use a mix of descriptors in combat because either of those things can happen (overnight resting, magical healing) and then in 5e there is also spending HD to heal or using a medical kit. And this again because HP is a combination of factors.




I would definitely agree that HP represents a combination of factors, I have never seen anyone who honestly claims that pounds of meat are cut from your body on a successful attack.

Honestly it is just the one or two people that tell me that there was never any hit in the first place that just blow my mind.  But these are the same type of people that look at their strength score to tell them how damaged their character is so maybe I should just take the hint.


----------



## pemerton

Shasarak said:


> Honestly it is just the one or two people that tell me that there was never any hit in the first place that just blow my mind.



How would that idea possibly have been started?

Maybe by something like this?

[H]it points are not actually a measure of physical damage, by and large, as far as characters (and some other creatures as
well) are concerned. Therefore, the location of hits and the type of damage caused are not germane to them. . . .

Damage scored to characters or certain monsters is actually not substantially physical - a mere nick or scratch until the lost handful of hit points are considered - it is a matter of wearing away the endurance, the luck, the magical protections. . . .

For those who wonder why poison does either killing damage (usually) or no harm whatsoever, recall the justification for character hit points. That is, damage is not actually sustained - at least in proportion to the number of hit points marked off in most cases. The so called damage is the expenditure of favor from deities, luck, skill, and perhaps a scratch, and thus the saving throw. If that mere scratch managed to be venomous, then DEATH. If no such wound was delivered, then NO DAMAGE FROM THE POISON.​
(From Gygax's DMG, pp 61, 81.)


----------



## Jay Verkuilen

Sadras said:


> Despite the fact that a particular weapon might do slashing or piercing damage I have often narrated that the hit point loss came from the wind being knocked out of the PC as the flat of the blade or the pommel of the sword struck him/her across the chest. <snip> I'm not saying your way is wrong, where every successful attack draws blood, but for me to describe every attack against a PC like that would break immersion for our table.




I agree, this is more or less how I do it. I tend to assume that most hits are grazes or near misses, including spell damage. I adjust for the target, though, so a big inert target like a golem gets different description than a live one like a dwarf, even if the hit points are similar. This also means most healing is kind of an exercise in hand waving, but it's one of those things we've trained ourselves to mostly ignore.


----------



## Jay Verkuilen

Shasarak said:


> Honestly it is just the one or two people that tell me that there was never any hit in the first place that just blow my mind.  But these are the same type of people that look at their strength score to tell them how damaged their character is so maybe I should just take the hint.



This particular interpretation goes all the way back to 1E at least, and was Gygax's. I suspect that like a lot of other things he didn't bother with much of an interpretation at first but was pressed on it and came up with one. It's one that clearly doesn't satisfy a vocal minority.


----------



## Kobold Boots

Jay Verkuilen said:


> This particular interpretation goes all the way back to 1E at least, and was Gygax's. I suspect that like a lot of other things he didn't bother with much of an interpretation at first but was pressed on it and came up with one. It's one that clearly doesn't satisfy a vocal minority.




Agreed regarding vocal minority, but it really comes down to common interpretation of terms and managing expectations.

If you are rolling "to hit" the expectation is that there's a hit.
If you are rolling "to damage" the expectation is that there has been damage.

If you don't want to have misunderstandings of the meta and abstraction of things, then the sidebar explaining what HP and AC really are needs to be in the players' handbook.

Otherwise, when you find it in the DMG (which lets be fair, almost no one read all the way through before running their first game) then of course 30 years later you're going to have these kinds of discussions.  That said, there are many people who played 1e D&D that don't remember the basic combat and initiative differences or never used them for the same reasons.

Games aimed at folks that obsess over details never survive in that state once they become popular or attain mass appeal.  It's not a bad thing, but I think that forums like these cater to people who sweat over details and have time to chat about it.


----------



## Jay Verkuilen

Kobold Boots said:


> Agreed regarding vocal minority, but it really comes down to common interpretation of terms and managing expectations.
> 
> If you are rolling "to hit" the expectation is that there's a hit.
> If you are rolling "to damage" the expectation is that there has been damage.




Sure, which is why I tend to think of them as being grazes or blows that are parried but jar the target. Anyone who's done some sparring and paid attention knows that those start to get to you and will wear you down until you start making real mistakes that leave you open to a bigger, more consequential blow. If you want a good example of how "ablative" combat works IRL, think of things like a group of people hunting large game (elephants, whales, bison, etc.) with primitive weapons like spears or fairly weak bows. Many of the attacks are fairly small, with the purpose of trying to bleed out the beast until it's sufficiently weakened that a killing blow can be struck. 

Of course, hand to hand "for real" combat among humans is not actually like that from what I understand. It's much quicker, deadlier, and more confusing and humans are both much more fragile and much more resilient than would be expected, but that's not what mid to higher level D&D simulates (to the extent it simulates anything exactly). The problem is that that often really bugs folks in various ways, particularly ones who have (or think they have) a knowledge of combat, often much too informed by Hollywood, where low caliber handgguns are often portrayed as magic wands of death. D&D doesn't really simulate either RL combat or Hollywood combat. 




> If you don't want to have misunderstandings of the meta and abstraction of things, then the sidebar explaining what HP and AC really are needs to be in the players' handbook. <snip> Games aimed at folks that obsess over details never survive in that state once they become popular or attain mass appeal.  It's not a bad thing, but I think that forums like these cater to people who sweat over details and have time to chat about it.




Sure, this forum is for a bunch of obsessed freaks  but lots of more casual players get bothered too. They may not spend time articulating it on the internet or even know how to articulate it clearly, but they do get bugged. 

Description of what damage means can also be used to help reinforce a character concept. For example, in a game I play in my Dex build paladin and the high Con/Toughness feat abjurer have roughly the same hit points and if the abjurer is using Shield has roughly the same ACs. However, they're very different characters with very different concepts. The paladin avoids damage primarily by skill, speed, and divine favor, parrying blows with sword and shield, for instance. The abjurer is using magic and, in that character's case, sheer toughness and resilience. The exact same damage can and should be described differently to reinforce the theme of the characters.


----------



## Tony Vargas

Sadras said:


> I'm not saying your way is wrong, where every successful attack draws blood, but for me to describe every attack against a PC like that would break immersion for our table.



 It's only 'wrong' when you make a successful attack against a stone or turnip.  (And I know D&D has stone golems and galeb-dur, and I'd be surprised if no one had ever created a turnip-monster for it, too.) ... or, y'know, anything else about the attack, the character, or the situation precludes drawing blood, or if you'd find the mechanics of resolving the injury inconsistent with it drawing blood.  

So, certainly not wrong, but also not necessarily always right?



Hussar said:


> Or, put it another way, I insist that your troll bite causes strawberries to explode from my nose.  Prove me wrong using the mechanics.



 I think the real point is you (as ahem, 'injured party,' can narrate the injury in accord with your established narrative - if you're playing Mr. Spock, you narrate a wound as bleeding green blood; as the DM you can narrate what makes narrative sense in your world, like the old 'lasers cauterize the wound, so you're not bleeding,' thing (yeah, I know); you pick the narrative, so you can associate it as much (or as little, to really tick off that guy at the table who's bothered by it, or to prove the game mechanic is dissociated) as you want, to your standards of narrative-to-mechanic correspondence.  

It's just another iteration of what D&D does throughout:  if there's a problem with your game, it's your fault, not the system's, every time.  You knew the DMing job was Empowered when you took it, Fred.  If you think that sounds logically fallacious or unfair or don't like references to 50+ yo cartoons or something, well, /that's your fault too/.  

Because discussion of RPG rulesets is all about assigning blame when the game sucks, not about making them better, right?




pemerton said:


> How would that idea possibly have been started?
> 
> Maybe by something like this?
> 
> [H]it points are not actually a measure of physical damage, by and large, as far as characters (and some other creatures as
> well) are concerned. Therefore, the location of hits and the type of damage caused are not germane to them. . . .
> 
> Damage scored to characters or certain monsters is actually not substantially physical - a mere nick or scratch until the lost handful of hit points are considered - it is a matter of wearing away the endurance, the luck, the magical protections. . . .
> 
> For those who wonder why poison does either killing damage (usually) or no harm whatsoever, recall the justification for character hit points. That is, damage is not actually sustained - at least in proportion to the number of hit points marked off in most cases. The so called damage is the expenditure of favor from deities, luck, skill, and perhaps a scratch, and thus the saving throw. If that mere scratch managed to be venomous, then DEATH. If no such wound was delivered, then NO DAMAGE FROM THE POISON.​
> (From Gygax's DMG, pp 61, 81.)



 That's not how the idea got started, though, that was (should have been) the end of if.  It got started because people complained long and loud, back in the day (way back, even before my day in the day), how unrealistic it was that characters gained HD as they leveled.   Because, well, if you think of hit points as representing nothing buy physical damage, going from having 5 to have 66 without becoming much larger or much sturdier doesn't make much sense, and, 'realistically,' (yeah, I know) most human-like fantasy races don't get that much larger (at least, not through the repeated experience of killing things and taking their stuff) or that much sturdier (when they do get that much sturdier it usually involved a medusa or cockatrice or something, and is quite sudden).

So EGG, being who he was, wrote a long involved rationalization of the game mechanic.  

And it was fine until 40 years later, some nerds decided it was 'dissociated' because hit points /had always been all about physical damage/, when, in fact, on the grounds of (defense against) realism, hit points had 'always' (as of 1979) been about non-physical factors, as well or even instead.  



Kobold Boots said:


> If you are rolling "to hit" the expectation is that there's a hit.
> If you are rolling "to damage" the expectation is that there has been damage.



 Yep, and D&D has been disappointing you from the beginning. ;P  You make /a/ roll to hit, but you're not swinging only once, for instance.  No matter how much 'damage' you roll, you won't be removing body parts ... unless, of course, the monster's entry says certain bits are cut off after taking X damage, in which case you can chop bits off it with a mace or fireball or psionic blast.



> If you don't want to have misunderstandings of the meta and abstraction of things, then the sidebar explaining what HP and AC really are needs to be in the players' handbook.



 Isn't it? I think it has been for a while now (I may be thinking of the more-than-one-swing-in-an-single attack roll bit).  It's a whole lot shorter than EGG's way of putting it, but then, so's everything.



Jay Verkuilen said:


> Sure, this forum is for a bunch of obsessed freaks  but lots of more casual players get bothered too. They may not spend time articulating it on the internet or even know how to articulate it clearly, but they do get bugged.



 I've rarely seen casual players bothered by the minutia of hit point rationalizations - though, to be fair, I had never seen too many repeat 'casual' players until 2010, when I started participating in Encounters.  

D&D does seem to say you're being 'hit' a lot more than seems to happen with a character in genre, in the sense of struck and visibly wounded.  Particularly in pop-culture fantasy TV/movies, characters tend to swing swords a lot, but land more kicks, punches, trips, and the like - when the target is a main cast member or important villain, anyway, the mooks just get skewered.  D&D has generally sorta delivered, once you think through the hit <> hit and damage <> physical wound routine.  Because losing hps indirectly, but fairly simply models the way those characters in genre will run from a fight or appear desperate, even though they haven't been touched because "there's too many of them!" or "he's really good, we can't take him" or whatever (they're running low on hps, see?).  Except, of course, that you need Cure ____ Wounds & healing potions or weeks of rests to 'heal' your not-damage from when you weren't hit.  

But, if you /don't/ bother to think through all that, it still delivers about the cadence of the pop-culture-fantasy-genre battle:  Hero goes into battle, villain comes on strong, here is pressed to even defend himself, but, on the verge of losing (dangling over a cliff, struck a serious blow, dropped to his knees, reeling or even unconscious for a moment as the villain gloats), he rallies and wins.  

(Y'know, more or less depending on edition, variants, DM, PC being the 'hero,' monster being the 'villain,' the rest of the party, etc...)


Besides, nowadays, if a newb asks you "what are these hit points all about anyway?" you can just tell him "meh, it's like your health bar in a fighting game," and he'll totally get it.  Because fighting games ripped off hit points from D&D, thankyouverymuch.


----------



## Kobold Boots

This is wrong, This is right.

- I posit that drawing blood on every successful hit is wrong within the historical intention of HP abstraction and wrong as far as RAW is concerned even now.
- I also posit that it is impossible for anyone to tell any DM what is wrong at his or her own table because of Rule 0.

Anything beyond this is likely fodder for the discussion thread, but know that you're beating whatever drum you prefer to beat and not having a RAW discussion.

Be well
KB


----------



## Lanefan

pemerton said:


> In 1st ed AD&D it could cause level loss - so you can get worse at fighting because you're tired from walking/running, ...



Where was this?

I know there's probably still a few corners of the DMG and PH I haven't competely dug through over the years, but I sure don't recall ever seeing this anywhere.

If it's in UA or DSG or WSG then I likely did miss it, as I cherry-picked from UA at best and never really gave the other two books much thought at all.

Lanefan


----------



## Jay Verkuilen

pemerton said:


> In 1st ed AD&D it could cause level loss - so you can get worse at fighting because you're tired from walking/running,




I totally don't remember this. It might be somewhere in the glorious sprawling mess that is the DMG1E, though I'm nowhere near my copy at the moment. Level loss was usually the province of certain undead, though you could start losing XP or being unable to gain it due to things like alignment conflict. 

There were many rules in 1E that rarely got used, though: Did _anyone _actually use initiative RAW? If so, could they actually _explain _it?


----------



## Shasarak

Jay Verkuilen said:


> This particular interpretation goes all the way back to 1E at least, and was Gygax's. I suspect that like a lot of other things he didn't bother with much of an interpretation at first but was pressed on it and came up with one. It's one that clearly doesn't satisfy a vocal minority.




You seem sincere and I wish that I could just take your assurance that was the case and on the other hand there is just no evidence that was true.


----------



## Jay Verkuilen

Shasarak said:


> You seem sincere and I wish that I could just take your assurance that was the case and on the other hand there is just no evidence that was true.




The relevant quote from the DMG1E was posted already by @_*pemerton*_ somewhere in this thread. I was looking for it but can't find it. I'll post it later tonight. 

As to what Gygax _actually thought_ before he wrote that, well he's dead so who the heck knows for sure. I marked my speculation as speculation. From what I understand, Gygax was a pretty old skool wargamer, mostly focused on the numbers. According to Wikipedia Arneson and Gygax got the idea of hit points from a naval wargame; the original idea was developed by the US Navy in the 1920s!


----------



## Shasarak

Jay Verkuilen said:


> The relevant quote from the DMG1E was posted already by [MENTION=42582]pemerton[/MENTION] somewhere in this thread. I was looking for it but can't find it. I'll post it later tonight.




Do you mean the guy who thinks that Encumbrance and Strength is a measure of how injured you are?  I would not put too much stock into his "quotes".



> As to what Gygax _actually thought_ before he wrote that, well he's dead so who the heck knows for sure. I marked my speculation as speculation. From what I understand, Gygax was a pretty old skool wargamer, mostly focused on the numbers.




You can get a good idea by reading what he wrote.


----------



## Jay Verkuilen

Shasarak said:


> Do you mean the guy who thinks that Encumbrance and Strength is a measure of how injured you are?  I would not put too much stock into his "quotes".




I can't say I frequently agree with all of the views of @_*pemerton*_ , but I'm pretty sure he can copy from the 1E DMG just fine. 



> You can get a good idea by reading what he wrote.




Indeed you can, and the notion that a combat round is a minute in length and summarizes a substantial set of exchanges in battle along with the interpretation of hit points as not being meat points is Gygax's. I'm not near my copy of the DMG1E at the moment. However, I did find this quote from an article in Dragon #24, 1979 "The Melee in D&D":

_Hit points are a combination of actual physical constitution, skill at the avoidance of taking real physical damage, luck and/or magical or divine factors. Ten points of damage dealt to a rhino indicated a considerable wound, while the same damage sustained by the 8th level fighter indicates a near miss, a slight wound, and a bit of luck used up, a bit of fatigue piling up against his or her skill at avoiding the fatal cut or thrust. So even when a hit is scored in melee combat, it is more often than not a grazing blow, a scratch, a mere light wound which would have been fatal (or nearly so) to a lesser mortal. If sufficient numbers of such wounds accrue to the character, however, stamina, skill, and luck will eventually run out, and an attack will strike home..._

The passage in the DMG1E is nearly identical. This web page discusses it and has a shorter version of the quote. 

_Damage scored to characters or certain monsters is actually not  substantially physical–a mere nick or scratch until the last handful of  hit points are considered–it is a matter of wearing away the endurance,  the luck, the magical protections._


----------



## Flexor the Mighty!

Ah the good old hit point argument.  I hope you guys finally resolve it.


----------



## Shasarak

Jay Verkuilen said:


> I can't say I frequently agree with all of the views of @_*pemerton*_ , but I'm pretty sure he can copy from the 1E DMG just fine.
> 
> 
> 
> Indeed you can, and the notion that a combat round is a minute in length and summarizes a substantial set of exchanges in battle along with the interpretation of hit points as not being meat points is Gygax's. I'm not near my copy of the DMG1E at the moment. However, I did find this quote from an article in Dragon #24, 1979 "The Melee in D&D":
> 
> _Hit points are a combination of actual physical constitution, skill at the avoidance of taking real physical damage, luck and/or magical or divine factors. Ten points of damage dealt to a rhino indicated a considerable wound, while the same damage sustained by the 8th level fighter indicates a near miss, a slight wound, and a bit of luck used up, a bit of fatigue piling up against his or her skill at avoiding the fatal cut or thrust. So even when a hit is scored in melee combat, it is more often than not a grazing blow, a scratch, a mere light wound which would have been fatal (or nearly so) to a lesser mortal. If sufficient numbers of such wounds accrue to the character, however, stamina, skill, and luck will eventually run out, and an attack will strike home..._
> 
> The passage in the DMG1E is nearly identical. This web page discusses it and has a shorter version of the quote.
> 
> _Damage scored to characters or certain monsters is actually not  substantially physical–a mere nick or scratch until the last handful of  hit points are considered–it is a matter of wearing away the endurance,  the luck, the magical protections._




These prove the point, especially: So even when a hit is scored in melee combat, it is more often than not a grazing blow, a scratch, a mere light wound which would have been fatal (or nearly so) to a lesser mortal.

I honestly dont know how you could explain it better then that and yet here we are.


----------



## Jay Verkuilen

Flexor the Mighty! said:


> Ah the good old hit point argument.  I hope you guys finally resolve it.




Heh, not possible. I'm not actually trying to make the argument, just noting that Gygax was pretty clear about what he thought, whether you like it or not. He also thought that a one minute combat round was a good idea, which just feels... wrong. I suspect he just adopted the mechanic for game reasons and then came up with the justification later, but given that he's dead and can't speak for himself this is what we have.


----------



## Flexor the Mighty!

Jay Verkuilen said:


> Heh, not possible. I'm not actually trying to make the argument, just noting that Gygax was pretty clear about what he thought, whether you like it or not. He also thought that a one minute combat round was a good idea, which just feels... wrong. I suspect he just adopted the mechanic for game reasons and then came up with the justification later, but given that he's dead and can't speak for himself this is what we have.




We have switched back to a game with a 1 minute round and due to 18 years of gaming with 6-10 second rounds I'm finding that some players are struggling with it.  Thank god we aren't switching from GURPS and the 1 second round!


----------



## Jay Verkuilen

Shasarak said:


> These prove the point, especially: So even when a hit is scored in melee combat, it is more often than not a grazing blow, a scratch, a mere light wound which would have been fatal (or nearly so) to a lesser mortal.
> 
> I honestly dont know how you could explain it better then that and yet here we are.




Um, I'm not sure why you thought I was arguing to the contrary. I think we're having a case of vehement agreement, because I more or less agree with the "hit points aren't meat points" position!


----------



## Shasarak

Flexor the Mighty! said:


> Ah the good old hit point argument.  I hope you guys finally resolve it.




Yeah, and then we will end world hunger.


----------



## Shasarak

Jay Verkuilen said:


> Um, I'm not sure why you thought I was arguing to the contrary. I think we're having a case of vehement agreement, because I more or less agree with the "hit points aren't meat points" position!




But are hit points actually miss points?


----------



## Jay Verkuilen

Flexor the Mighty! said:


> We have switched back to a game with a 1 minute round and due to 18 years of gaming with 6-10 second rounds I'm finding that some players are struggling with it.  Thank god we aren't switching from GURPS and the 1 second round!




IMO 6 seconds is a bit too short but 1 minute just feels ludicrously long. In our 2E days we thought of a round as being 12 seconds. In BESM I think it's 10 seconds. That feels better to me. Ultimately it's kind of subjective.


----------



## The Crimson Binome

Flexor the Mighty! said:


> Ah the good old hit point argument.  I hope you guys finally resolve it.



It's been resolved for quite a while now. The other side just hasn't realized it yet.


----------



## Flexor the Mighty!

Jay Verkuilen said:


> IMO 6 seconds is a bit too short but 1 minute just feels ludicrously long. In our 2E days we thought of a round as being 12 seconds. In BESM I think it's 10 seconds. That feels better to me. Ultimately it's kind of subjective.




I just tell them to embrace the more wargamey old school nature of the system and think in terms of rounds rather than a particular time.


----------



## billd91

Tony Vargas said:


> And it was fine until 40 years later, some nerds decided it was 'dissociated' because hit points /had always been all about physical damage/, when, in fact, on the grounds of (defense against) realism, hit points had 'always' (as of 1979) been about non-physical factors, as well or even instead.




Let's not over-use the 4venger complaints about the identification of dissociated mechanics. The hit point arguments are far more about the degree of abstraction than whether or not the rules are disconnected from an in-character/in-setting perspective. Hit points that aren't strictly meat damage can still be understood from a character being increasingly tired out or weakened from blocking/dodging the attacks that would probably have killed less skilled/lucky/divinely-favored people.


----------



## Jay Verkuilen

Shasarak said:


> But are hit points actually miss points?



Well Gygax clearly thought so. 

IMO I leave it up to the character's theme and use it to reinforce that. I said this elsewhere but the way I'd narrate damage would depend on the character and the nature of the campaign. 

My example was my Dex-based paladin and the Con and Toughness-oriented abjurer in a game I play in. These two characters have roughly equivalent ACs and hit points but we narrate them quite differently, though. My paladin is a skill character who wears light armor, a shield, and speed, so presumably yeah, damage being taken is reflecting things that should have been hits on a lesser warrior getting turned into grazes or near-misses, at the cost of increasing fatigue. That character's theme is oriented around time and fate, so that would factor in, too. The abjurer has motley medium armor and uses magic to defend himself along with being really tough---he's got an affinity for rats, so he's often described as being as tough as a rat. He's clumsy, though. I'd narrate his hit point losses as magic being spent (especially if he uses _Shield _or the _Arcane Ward_), pieces of his armor being knocked off, or him just toughing it out, particularly if it involves things that rats would resist, like diseases or poison (except, of course, for rat poison). 

I won't say we narrate every attack, but a cool one definitely, so a fun miss or hit will get narrated whereas a boring or mundane one will just be left to disappear into the void. 

Is this going to satisfy all people? Probably not. But it works for us, making the game feel alive and reinforcing the themes of the characters without bogging down in pointless detail.


----------



## Shasarak

Jay Verkuilen said:


> Well Gygax clearly thought so.




Uh huh.


----------



## Tony Vargas

Jay Verkuilen said:


> Well Gygax clearly thought so.



 They're (avoiding getting)hit points, in EGG's treatise.    At least, in large part.



Jay Verkuilen said:


> Gygax was pretty clear about what he thought, whether you like it or not. He also thought that a one minute combat round was a good idea, which just feels... wrong.



It works for boxing. 



billd91 said:


> The hit point arguments are far more about the degree of abstraction .



 They were, in the very cogent sense that abstraction has meaningful definition that applies.  But, those arguments were prettymuch settled 40 years ago.  I mean, we were still having them back in the day, but between appealing to the authority of the DMG, and the treatise not being a terrible rationalization, things were mostly OK.  If someone really couldn't handle the abstractions of D&D combat - taking a minute to make 'one' attack, Armor causing misses instead of absorbing damage, damage not even necessarily being physical injury anyway, etc - they'd eventually find RuneQuest or something).



> than whether or not the rules are disconnected from an in-character/in-setting perspective



 The rules for combat are a profound abstraction and pretty poor model of medieval combat, which was at least a concrete thing that happened centuries ago (and gets studied re-enacted today).  The rules are disconnected from that - that's abstraction, afterall, the profound disconnect from the concrete.  OTOH, the setting isn't concrete, it's imagination working within the idioms of a genre.  to the extent that the system models the conventions of the genre, it helps with that, to the extent it doesn't, there can be an impediment - but setting, genre, & rules, all are abstract concepts to begin with.

Saying there's a disconnect between the reality of character/setting and the abstraction of the rules is mistakenly assigning concrete qualities to an abstract product of imagination.  The disconnect is as imaginary as the character & the setting.


----------



## pemerton

Jay Verkuilen said:


> I adjust for the target, though, so a big inert target like a golem gets different description than a live one like a dwarf, even if the hit points are similar.



In some of the bits I elided from the Gygax quote, he says that for most monsters, hp loss = physical damage. So what you describe here has strong precedent behind it!


----------



## pemerton

pemerton said:
			
		

> In 1st ed AD&D it could cause level loss - so you can get worse at fighting because you're tired from walking/running





Lanefan said:


> Where was this?





Jay Verkuilen said:


> I totally don't remember this.



From the DMG, p 49 (under the heading "Forced Movement"):

It is possible to make forced marches up to twice the distance shown for daily movement rote. Such forced movement Increases the daily rate in 10% increments, from 10% to 100% at the option of the party, to a maximum of double normal movement rate; but as soon as a total of 100% of additional normal movement rate is reached, or as soon as the party determines to assume non-forced movement, whichever first occurs, a mandatory rest period must be enforced. . . .

<snip resting chart>

Failure to rest after normol movement is equal to 100% means that beasts of burden have a cumulative chance of dropping dead of 10% per 10% increment of additional movement of any sort. Other creatures lose 1 level of ability or hit die in the same manner, until 0 is reached and exhaustion kills them. Such loss of vitality, whether by beast of burden, creature, or character requires a full 8 hours of additional rest for each such 10% increment, hit die, or level of ability lost. For exomple, a 12th level fighter who moves an additional 90% of movement after exceeding normal movement by 100% must rest 72 hours, consecutively, in order to regain 12th level of ability. Prior to that period of rest, the character is effectively 3rd level!​
I will add: those rules may or may not be easily reconciled with this passage (from p 69, under the heading "Special Note Regarding Fatigue"):

No rules for exhaustion and fatigue are given here because of the tremendous number of variables, including the stamina of the characters and creatures involved. Thus, characters mounted on horses have gradually slowing movement, but this is not a factor unless pursuing creatures tire more or less rapidly than do the mounts. You must iudge these factors in a case of continuing pursuit.
Fatigue merely slows movement and reduces combat effectiveness. Exhaustion will generally require a day of complete rest to restore the exhausted creatures. Always bear in mind that humans inured to continuous running, for example, can do so for hours without noticeable fatigue . . .​


----------



## Sadras

pemerton said:


> From the DMG, p 49 (under the heading "Forced Movement"):
> It is possible to make forced marches up to twice the distance shown for daily movement rote. Such forced movement Increases the daily rate in 10% increments, from 10% to 100% at the option of the party, to a maximum of double normal movement rate; but as soon as a total of 100% of additional normal movement rate is reached, or as soon as the party determines to assume non-forced movement, whichever first occurs, a mandatory rest period must be enforced. . . .
> 
> <snip resting chart>
> 
> Failure to rest after normol movement is equal to 100% means that beasts of burden have a cumulative chance of dropping dead of 10% per 10% increment of additional movement of any sort. Other creatures lose 1 level of ability or hit die in the same manner, until 0 is reached and exhaustion kills them. Such loss of vitality, whether by beast of burden, creature, or character requires a full 8 hours of additional rest for each such 10% increment, hit die, or level of ability lost. For exomple, a 12th level fighter who moves an additional 90% of movement after exceeding normal movement by 100% must rest 72 hours, consecutively, in order to regain 12th level of ability. Prior to that period of rest, the character is effectively 3rd level!​
> I will add: those rules may or may not be easily reconciled with this passage (from p 69, under the heading "Special Note Regarding Fatigue"):
> No rules for exhaustion and fatigue are given here because of the tremendous number of variables, including the stamina of the characters and creatures involved. Thus, characters mounted on horses have gradually slowing movement, but this is not a factor unless pursuing creatures tire more or less rapidly than do the mounts. You must iudge these factors in a case of continuing pursuit.
> Fatigue merely slows movement and reduces combat effectiveness. Exhaustion will generally require a day of complete rest to restore the exhausted creatures. Always bear in mind that humans inured to continuous running, for example, can do so for hours without noticeable fatigue . . .​




I find that an interesting way to deal with fatigue - loss in class abilities and features. It would mean the wizard would lose the ability to cast more complex spells and the fighter would lose an additional attack, they would also suffer worse saving throws, thaco etc - as they were not at the optimum level of effectiveness. Makes sense. Thanks for the find.


----------



## Lanefan

Jay Verkuilen said:


> IMO 6 seconds is a bit too short but 1 minute just feels ludicrously long. In our 2E days we thought of a round as being 12 seconds. In BESM I think it's 10 seconds. That feels better to me. Ultimately it's kind of subjective.



We use 30 seconds, in part because it still divides evenly by 6 (giving 5-second segments) and is an even divisor of 60 to provide 2 rounds to the minute.  The only other numbers that work this way are 12 and 6, both of which are too short for a round to be.

It works, not perfectly, but better than 1-minute rounds.

Lanefan


----------



## Lanefan

pemerton said:


> From the DMG, p 49 (under the heading "Forced Movement"):
> 
> It is possible to make forced marches up to twice the distance shown for daily movement rote. Such forced movement Increases the daily rate in 10% increments, from 10% to 100% at the option of the party, to a maximum of double normal movement rate; but as soon as a total of 100% of additional normal movement rate is reached, or as soon as the party determines to assume non-forced movement, whichever first occurs, a mandatory rest period must be enforced. . . .
> 
> <snip resting chart>
> 
> Failure to rest after normol movement is equal to 100% means that beasts of burden have a cumulative chance of dropping dead of 10% per 10% increment of additional movement of any sort. Other creatures lose 1 level of ability or hit die in the same manner, until 0 is reached and exhaustion kills them. Such loss of vitality, whether by beast of burden, creature, or character requires a full 8 hours of additional rest for each such 10% increment, hit die, or level of ability lost. For exomple, a 12th level fighter who moves an additional 90% of movement after exceeding normal movement by 100% must rest 72 hours, consecutively, in order to regain 12th level of ability. Prior to that period of rest, the character is effectively 3rd level!​



Interesting.

Surprising there isn't some consideration given to a creature's constitution score affecting this.

Odd and probably unintended side effect is that a non-levelled commoner can go 30% extra with a 70% chance of survival, while if a 2nd-level character goes 30% extra she auto-dies on reaching 0th level.  At least, that's how this reads to me.

All in all, having never seen this and thus having never used it, I feel quite safe in saying I'll not be adopting it now. 



> I will add: those rules may or may not be easily reconciled with this passage (from p 69, under the heading "Special Note Regarding Fatigue"):
> 
> No rules for exhaustion and fatigue are given here because of the tremendous number of variables, including the stamina of the characters and creatures involved. Thus, characters mounted on horses have gradually slowing movement, but this is not a factor unless pursuing creatures tire more or less rapidly than do the mounts. You must iudge these factors in a case of continuing pursuit.
> Fatigue merely slows movement and reduces combat effectiveness. Exhaustion will generally require a day of complete rest to restore the exhausted creatures. Always bear in mind that humans inured to continuous running, for example, can do so for hours without noticeable fatigue . . .​



Taken together it sounds like he's saying it's more tiring to forced-march into a battle than it is to flee from it at top speed.


----------



## pemerton

billd91 said:


> Hit points that aren't strictly meat damage can still be understood from a character being increasingly tired out or weakened



But not so tired that you can't still move at your maximum pace, carry your maximum load, climb walls just as well as you could before entering melee, etc!

But suppose we downplay the "weakened, tired" aspect and emphasise Gygax's other elements - luck, divine favour, magical protections, etc. Even here there are multiple subsytems that don't interact - saving throws, as per the quote upthread about poison saves, are a separate subsystem for this stuff, and then magical protections and divine favour can also be the result of magic items, spells etc.

4e closes some of these gaps - there is generally no distinction, for instance, between the threats of physical harm that AD&D handled via saving throws and the threats of physical harm that AD&D handled via hit points; and as [MENTION=6873517]Jay Verkuilen[/MENTION] (I think) mentioned upthread, it uses healing surges to handle exhaustion.

But 4e opens up at least one new gap (or, perhaps, generalises it from the 3E barbarian's rage) - namely, limited use non-magical capabilities that manifest as martial encounter and daily powers, and action points.

Putting everything into a common pool can reduce the odd (non-)synergies between abstractions, but of course also reduces moving parts which itself has implications for game play.

3E is my personal least favourite for this stuff: it replaces poison saves (which, as Gygax describes in the quoted passage) were a type of luck mechanic, with Fortitude saves - but Fortitude is a mechanic largely independent of the hit point system; and poison doesn't do hp damage but stat damage. So your magical protections and luck stop you getting squashed by a hill giant's club (a mid-to-upper level PC can soak the 20 hp easily enough) but don't help agasint the STR damage (and resultant penalties to attack and damage, to maximum load, to athletics attempts, etc) from a giant spider's poison. But that poison, while it debilitates you, can't kill you - at worse it leaves you unable to move. (But until that point doesn't _slow_ you at all.)


----------



## Jay Verkuilen

pemerton said:


> From the DMG, p 49 (under the heading "Forced Movement"):<snip>




Yeah, wow, that's nasty. I don't recall ever using those rules but they are indeed in the 1E DMG. 




> I will add: those rules may or may not be easily reconciled with this passage (from p 69, under the heading "Special Note Regarding Fatigue"):




Yes, this is one of the truly ridiculous aspects of 1E: It's self-contradictory. Of course, a lot of this happened because the DMG was assembled from many different sources, including prior versions, _Dragon_ articles, modules, etc., which were written by Gygax but clearly not with an eye towards rigorous consistency. Doing that kind of checking in the days before easy access to search functions would have been fairly difficult.


----------



## Jay Verkuilen

Sadras said:


> I find that an interesting way to deal with fatigue - loss in class abilities and features. It would mean the wizard would lose the ability to cast more complex spells and the fighter would lose an additional attack, they would also suffer worse saving throws, thaco etc - as they were not at the optimum level of effectiveness. Makes sense. Thanks for the find.




It's darned nasty, that's for sure!


----------



## Jay Verkuilen

pemerton said:


> But not so tired that you can't still move at your maximum pace, carry your maximum load, climb walls just as well as you could before entering melee, etc!




Yeah, that's right. 




> 4e closes some of these gaps - there is generally no distinction, for instance, between the threats of physical harm that AD&D handled via saving throws and the threats of physical harm that AD&D handled via hit points; and as [MENTION=6873517]Jay Verkuilen[/MENTION] (I think) mentioned upthread, it uses healing surges to handle exhaustion.




Yes, it does, and IMO that's a good way of handling it, though I didn't find it came up that much. It would really help in 5E to use something like that. 




> Putting everything into a common pool can reduce the odd (non-)synergies between abstractions, but of course also reduces moving parts which itself has implications for game play.




It also makes it quite difficult to mod. 




> 3E is my personal least favourite for this stuff: it replaces poison saves (which, as Gygax describes in the quoted passage) were a type of luck mechanic, with Fortitude saves - but Fortitude is a mechanic largely independent of the hit point system; and poison doesn't do hp damage but stat damage. So your magical protections and luck stop you getting squashed by a hill giant's club (a mid-to-upper level PC can soak the 20 hp easily enough) but don't help agasint the STR damage (and resultant penalties to attack and damage, to maximum load, to athletics attempts, etc) from a giant spider's poison. But that poison, while it debilitates you, can't kill you - at worse it leaves you unable to move. (But until that point doesn't slow you at all.)




Don't forget about how hit points help you to fall from arbitrary heights at medium to high levels. Jumping without a parachute? Painful but possible. 

It was a bit goofy with that, although stat damage was something that PCs _feared_, which is pretty good to reflect the suck that is poison or undead type drains. The fact that it couldn't actually kill you was dumb, though. Definitely a Murphy's Rule. Fortitude isn't totally independent insofar as it depended on Constitution, as did hit points. But still, you're right that saves are weirdly non-integrated with attacks in many editions of the game.


----------



## billd91

pemerton said:


> 3E is my personal least favourite for this stuff: it replaces poison saves (which, as Gygax describes in the quoted passage) were a type of luck mechanic, with Fortitude saves - but Fortitude is a mechanic largely independent of the hit point system; and poison doesn't do hp damage but stat damage. So your magical protections and luck stop you getting squashed by a hill giant's club (a mid-to-upper level PC can soak the 20 hp easily enough) but don't help agasint the STR damage (and resultant penalties to attack and damage, to maximum load, to athletics attempts, etc) from a giant spider's poison. But that poison, while it debilitates you, can't kill you - at worse it leaves you unable to move. (But until that point doesn't _slow_ you at all.)




It's not like 1e had significantly fewer issues with respect to this than 3e. Poisons were also outside the hit point system (usually save or die, not lose hit points). The saves were no more a luck mechanic than Fortitude saves were (is anything rolled by a die not, ultimately, a luck mechanic?), they were just more highly dependent on your class and Gygax's quirky design than your Constitution. And as far as withstanding poison damage - high level characters in 3e are more likely to have high stats - boosted by gear if not their own level-ups - so it's not like your ability to withstand it is entirely independent of your higher level.


----------



## Hussar

billd91 said:


> Let's not over-use the 4venger complaints about the identification of dissociated mechanics. The hit point arguments are far more about the degree of abstraction than whether or not the rules are disconnected from an in-character/in-setting perspective. Hit points that aren't strictly meat damage can still be understood from a character being increasingly tired out or weakened from blocking/dodging the attacks that would probably have killed less skilled/lucky/divinely-favored people.




Ahh, the old two smurfs arguing about who is more blue argument.  Oh, my favorite system isn't dissociated because it's "less" abstract than your system.  Snort.


----------



## Hussar

On the question of "did the Troll bite me"?  Let's unpack that a little shall we?  And, let's keep this a 5e example.

In 5e, a troll does 1d6+4 points of piercing damage.  Now, I have an 8th level cleric in a 5e game with 50 (ish) HP.  So, Mr. Troll crits my character who is unhurt beforehand, and deals maximum damage.  20 points.  Now, in 5e, no damage that doesn't drop me below half shows on my character other than minor bumps and bruises and the like.  Nothing you wouldn't get from a hard day of exercise.  So, that troll bites me as hard as it possibly can and I show nothing more than a bruise and maybe not even that.

So, how do you narrate it?  You could narrate it as scraping off my armor.  Or you could narrate it as snapping closed just inches from my nose, causing my life to flash before my eyes and leaving me somewhat shaken.  Both narrations are perfectly fine as far as the mechanics go.  

It seems to me, that insisting that every hit MUST be some sort of physical hit is far more limiting to people's narrations.  You flat out cannot narrate that attack as dealing any real impact, by the rules.  So, why the insistince that every "hit" must be some sort of impact?  It's not like HP actually mean anything.  They mean whatever you want them to mean whenever you want them to mean that.  

For really creative people, I find gamers very stuck in some serious ruts when it comes to creativity.

And, really, this goes right back to my original point about this just being edition warring in funny glasses.  EVERY edition of D&D, regardless of E was the same.  HP were never given any real meaning. The only difference is 4e made that up front and apparent and suddenly forced people to realize that the way they were playing wasn't actually supported by the mechanics.  5e does exactly the same thing as 4e, but, suddenly all these discussions about "disassociation" go by the wayside because people LIKE 5e.  If abstractions were actually the problem, then it would be a problem in every edition, but, the arguments are entirely self serving.


----------



## pemerton

billd91 said:


> It's not like 1e had significantly fewer issues with respect to this than 3e. Poisons were also outside the hit point system (usually save or die, not lose hit points). The saves were no more a luck mechanic than Fortitude saves were (is anything rolled by a die not, ultimately, a luck mechanic?), they were just more highly dependent on your class and Gygax's quirky design than your Constitution.



When I say that poison saves in AD&D were a "luck mechanic", I mean that what they model is luck. Clerics don't have the best poison saves because they're tougher than anyone else, but because their gods protect them from death.

Gygax's comments on poison saves that I quoted upthread (DMG, p 81) reinforce this:

recall the justification for character hit points. That is, damage is not actually sustained - at least in proportion to the number of hit points marked off in most cases. The so called damage is the expenditure of favor from deities, luck, skill, and perhaps a scratch, and thus the saving throw. If that mere scratch managed to be venomous, then DEATH. If no such wound was delivered, then NO DAMAGE FROM THE POISON.​
There is also his more general remark (p 111-12) about the significance of improved saving throws as PCs gain levels:

[T]he accumulation of hit points and the ever-greater abilities and better saving throws of characters represents the aid supplied by supernatural forces.​
That's not to say that being tough doesn't help with poison saves (qv dwarves; UA barbarians; bonuses from high CON in DDG) - which suggest that, at least for those characters, some successful saves may involve being poisoned but shrugging it off. But that clearly isn't the mandatory, or even the default, narration of a successful poison save.



Hussar said:


> Ahh, the old two smurfs arguing about who is more blue argument.  Oh, my favorite system isn't dissociated because it's "less" abstract than your system.  Snort.



For this smurf, it's not so much "dissociation" (I regard that as a pseudo concept) but simply which suite of mechanics sets up both the gameplay, and the abstractions, in a way that suits my purposes.

I don't mind the AD&D approach too much, except that (i) there are too many saving throw categories, and (ii) there is no really satisfactory way of dealing with fatigue/exhaustion other then perhaps temp hp loss, which is already a part of (some versions of) the unarmed combat rules, the subdual rules and the _slippers of kicking_, but is a pain in the neck in all those contexts and so doesn't really warrant being expanded to other parts of the game.

Obviously I don't mind the 4e approach - everything hangs together neatly around hp/HS except for encounter powers and action points, but I'm quite happy to have these features - which in various ways feed into action economy - be separate things to play with.

As I said, my least favourite is 3E just because it anchors just enough stuff to the fiction (eg Fortitude saves clearly involve "toughing out" being poisoned; stat damage clearly represents genuine physical debilitation) the you can't ignore it, but then leaves the core mechanics - AC and hp - basically unchanged from AD&D (and so quite abstract in relation to the fiction). I find it neither fish nor fowl but an unhappy combination of each.


----------



## Hussar

Yes, well, 3e shares a fair bit of DNA from Rolemaster and it shows.  Unfortunately, as you said, it doesn't actually mesh all that well.  Fortunately, it's also very, very easy to ignore.


----------



## Tony Vargas

Hussar said:


> And, really, this goes right back to my original point about this just being edition warring in funny glasses.  EVERY edition of D&D, regardless of E was the same.  HP were never given any real meaning. The only difference is 4e made that up front and apparent and suddenly forced people to realize that the way they were playing wasn't actually supported by the mechanics.



 4e's take on hps wasn't any more up-front than other eds, they were abstract, the abstraction was not pasted to every weapon & attack like a tag or anything.  The mechanics were different, but in a shell-game sort of way.  In the classic game, the meaningful healing resource was the Cleric's spells, in 3e it ended up being Wands, in 4e it was surges.  But it all added up to the same thing:  you managed limited resources to get your party through a day of adventuring.   4e's treatment of healing via surges & surge-triggers was more consistent with the abstraction and "in the fiction" rationalizations of hit points than being dependent on spells or wands - if anything, it should have been less jarring, not more.  



> 5e does exactly the same thing as 4e, but, suddenly all these discussions about "disassociation" go by the wayside because people LIKE 5e.  If abstractions were actually the problem, then it would be a problem in every edition, but, the arguments are entirely self serving.



 In concept 5e does many of the same things 4e was attacked for, sure.  And the complaints were always nominally about those concepts.  But, in implemenation it's entirely different, and went right back to the traditional pecking order among classes.  
So 5e's fine.


----------



## Hussar

[MENTION=996]Tony Vargas[/MENTION] - I'm going to disagree with you on this a bit.  4e was very up front about HP being just an abstraction.  Unlike earlier editions, every single keyword became a damage type, including a number of pretty non-obvious ones like  "Psychic Damage" and the like.  Fear effects that caused damage.  That sort of thing.

5e carries the same explicit damage types as well - psychic damage as a keyword, for example.  

Earlier editions were not quite so explicit about their damage types, outside of weapon damage type - bludgeoning, piercing, slashing.


----------



## Tony Vargas

Hussar said:


> [MENTION=996]Tony Vargas[/MENTION] - I'm going to disagree with you on this a bit.  4e was very up front about HP being just an abstraction.  Unlike earlier editions, every single keyword became a damage type, including a number of pretty non-obvious ones like  "Psychic Damage" and the like.  Fear effects that caused damage.  That sort of thing.
> 
> 5e carries the same explicit damage types as well - psychic damage as a keyword, for example.
> 
> Earlier editions were not quite so explicit about their damage types, outside of weapon damage type - bludgeoning, piercing, slashing.



I guesss you could say 4e was more up-front and explicit about a lot of things:  it formalized & labeled things that had been with the game forever - Source, the game had always had fighters (martial), clerics (Divine) and magic-users (arcane); Role, likewise fighter (defender, just bad at it), leader (cleric, mainly healing), controller (magic-user), Striker (OK, a backstabbing thief is maybe stretching it, but it was only able to contribute that damage spike in combat - Rogues really came into their own in 3e); Encounters followed by 5-min Short Rests (in the classic game, exploration proceeded in 10 min turns, when interrupted by combat, the balance of the turn was spent resting & tending wounds/weapons/armor); etc.   

Though, as for damage type, 3e introduced the same list 4e used, including Psychic, and 1e had oddball rules for temporary damage, subdual damage, and damage from illusions and psionic attacks - and, really, all the same damage types, just implied rather than formally so.


----------



## pemerton

Tony Vargas said:


> 4e's take on hps wasn't any more up-front than other eds, they were abstract, the abstraction was not pasted to every weapon & attack like a tag or anything.





Hussar said:


> 4e was very up front about HP being just an abstraction.





Tony Vargas said:


> 4e's treatment of healing via surges & surge-triggers was more consistent with the abstraction and "in the fiction" rationalizations of hit points than being dependent on spells or wands - if anything, it should have been less jarring, not more.



I agree with Hussar, and think that the second passage quoted from Tony Vargas runs the same way: healing surges, inspriational healing, proportionate healing - these _are_ more consistent with the rationalisation, and that is one reason why they make the abstract nature of hp more evident.

When Curing Serious Wounds requires you to pray harder and better than Curing Light Wounds, it's possible to imagine that hp resotration is the healing of wounds. And one can ignore those other parts of the system point in other direction (eg every 0-level character who isn't dead from hp loss can be cured to full health by Cure Light Wounds; for a first level character, it's virtually impossible to be alive and yet have "wounds" that cannot heal with a week of bed rest; etc). In 4e there are _only_ those other parts!



Tony Vargas said:


> 4e was more up-front and explicit about a lot of things: it formalized & labeled things that had been with the game forever



What do keywords do? They provide a clear framework for interactions between rules elements; and they provide a clear understanding about how otherwise abstract/metagame mechanics bear upon the shared fiction.

D&D has had keywords of various sorts for ever: in AD&D you had one-handed and two-hadned weapons; S, M and L creatures; magic item categories; saving throw categories; just to name a few; and 3E was absolutely replete with them, and with arguments about them too (eg what is the difference between a weapon attack, an unarmed attack and a natural attack?).

In AD&D some of those keywords are system-to-system: a creature's size label tells us how much damage it takes form a weapon hit, which in turn tells us how much to deduct from its hp total - none of that is mediated via the fiction. Others are system-to-fiction: a creature's size label tells us (roughly) how big it is; a creature's HD tells us (roughly) how tough it is; a weapon's damage die tells us (roughly) how big it is. Off the top of my head, though, I can't think of any keywords in AD&D class ability or spell descriptions that run from system-to-fiction. (That is all mediated via "natural language" descriptions.)

In 3E many keywords are system-to-system (eg a "luck" bonus can't stack with a "sacred" bonus) and some are system-to-fiction (eg a "language dependant: ability requires its user to speak to its target).

I've never understood the suggestion that 4e uses _more_ keywords than earlier editions, or that they are _more_ removed from the fiction. I don't think any actual reading of the various editions will bear this out. Even the argument about layout I find hard to take seriously: 3E spells all have descriptor lists at the top of their entries, just like the keywords at the top of a 4e power entry.

5e uses keywords much as 4e does, but it just buries them in the text (so we have to read through a paragraph of text to learn that a fireball does fire damage). This creates an illusion of resemblance to AD&D, but in fact I don't think 5e uses much natural language at all to mediate between the mechanics of class abilities (including spells) and the fiction. It uses keywords in much the same way that 4e did.


----------



## Hussar

I think that the difference with 4e from earlier editions is how up front they were about the keywords.  It was part of clarifying the rules that they just flat out slapped a keyword right at the top of everything instead of making you hunt through and find them.

Like I've always said, the issue with 4e has very little to do with substance and everything to do with presentation.  Rewrite 4e in 5e style and suddenly the differences between 4e and 5e mechanically are very, very small.


----------



## Tony Vargas

pemerton said:


> I agree with Hussar, and think that the second passage quoted from Tony Vargas runs the same way: healing surges, inspriational healing, proportionate healing - these _are_ more consistent with the rationalisation, and that is one reason why they make the abstract nature of hp more evident.



 Sort of, I guess:  'more consistent' could mean less evident in the sense of conspicuous, but more evident, in the sense of proveable.  

When I was running AD&D back in the day, I grokked EGG's hp treatise, but ran up against a serious inconsistency, the 3 Cure..Wounds spells made 0 sense in context.  A scratch representing 1/10th of  a high-level character's hps was surely 'light,' but the exact same 8 hps, delivered to a 1st level character might drop him, or represent 80% of is hps - that's not a 'Light Wound.'  That kind of thing, when the artifacts of the abstraction /don't/ add up, makes it more conspicuous, I think, though it also calls the rationalization into question, I suppose.



Spoiler: Back in my day...



(Ironically, the solution I came up with back then, c1984, was to have Cure..Wounds spells have the option of working litterally.  There were 3 of 'em, back then, Light, Serious, & Critical (plus Heal of course - which just cured all your damage).  Not a big leap to call any injury up to 1/4 your total hit points a 'Light Wound,' that way it neatly worked out: up to half your hps was Serious, up to 3/4 Critical - so I let the caster either roll the usual dice, or Cure one Wound of the appropraite type - the wounded player had to track his wounds individually for that to work.)



Of course, familiarity also makes things fade into the background.  After the 1e DMG defended hps, the remaining issues with it were just lived with so long they faded away - to the point that even /fixing/ them, would draw the abstraction of the system back into the limelight, again.



> When Curing Serious Wounds requires you to pray harder and better than Curing Light Wounds, it's possible to imagine that hp resotration is the healing of wounds. And one can ignore those other parts of the system point in other direction (eg every 0-level character who isn't dead from hp loss can be cured to full health by Cure Light Wounds; for a first level character, it's virtually impossible to be alive and yet have "wounds" that cannot heal with a week of bed rest; etc). In 4e there are _only_ those other parts!



 OK, we're say'n about the same stuff, really.  



> What do keywords do? They provide a clear framework for interactions between rules elements; and they provide a clear understanding about how otherwise abstract/metagame mechanics bear upon the shared fiction.



 They also make your RPG look like M:tG, because they both have the key word, 'keyword,' in the rules, and it means aproximately the same thing, in spite of the radically different the context. 



> D&D has had keywords of various sorts for ever: in AD&D you had one-handed and two-hadned weapons; S, M and L creatures; magic item categories; saving throw categories; just to name a few; and 3E was absolutely replete with them, and with arguments about them too (eg what is the difference between a weapon attack, an unarmed attack and a natural attack?).



 Sure, they just weren't called that, weren't differentiated from words used only for their natural language meanings, and weren't used consistently.  So weren't keywords, really, nor even good examples of jargon.  But, the game did have the kind of concepts that keywords would have been a more efficient way of handling, FWIW.



> I've never understood the suggestion that 4e uses _more_ keywords than earlier editions, or that they are _more_ removed from the fiction. I don't think any actual reading of the various editions will bear this out. Even the argument about layout I find hard to take seriously: 3E spells all have descriptor lists at the top of their entries, just like the keywords at the top of a 4e power entry.



Essentials put back the spell-school keywords, for that matter.  
Again, the only plausible explanation that doesn't paint the complainer as blowing smoke while working some nefarious agenda, is the power of familiarity.  When the keywords weren't labeled as such and faded into the baroque mosaic of Gygaxian prose, they were just an unexamined part of broader understanding of the whole game.

In another thread, I think, someone mentioned that 4e had so many more conditions than 3e or 5e and that was one of the things that slowed it down.  4e had 18 conditions.  3e has 40, 5e has 15.  



> 5e uses keywords much as 4e does, but it just buries them in the text (so we have to read through a paragraph of text to learn that a fireball does fire damage). This creates an illusion of resemblance to AD&D, but in fact I don't think 5e uses much natural language at all to mediate between the mechanics of class abilities (including spells) and the fiction. It uses keywords in much the same way that 4e did.



 A 3.x phrase like "deprived of dexterity bonus to AC" works like a keyword, in that it conveys the same information each time it's used and is important to some other rules, sure.  And 5e has a lotta phrases like that.  But they don't feel like keywords, so if you felt the need to project your hatred of 4e upon it's use of keywords, you can feel immediately comfortable in not hating 5e, rather than having to fume over it for a while before relenting, as you do if you settled on hating Surges, then were confronted with HD.



Hussar said:


> Like I've always said, the issue with 4e has very little to do with substance and everything to do with presentation.  Rewrite 4e in 5e style and suddenly the differences between 4e and 5e mechanically are very, very small.



 The voiced complaints often revolved around cosmetic differences that could be attirbuted to 'presentation,' sure, but 4e, however differently-presented, would still have a non-trivial degree of class balance baked in, that's robust to variations in pacing  - and 5e would still actually be D&D.   If it were sufficiently baroque and impenetrable in it's presentation - if copy-edited by EGG's Ghost, as it were - though, it might also make the DMing experience more like that of 5e (or even 1e - Gary's Ghost, and all).


----------



## Ratskinner

Hussar said:


> On the question of "did the Troll bite me"?  Let's unpack that a little shall we?  And, let's keep this a 5e example.
> 
> In 5e, a troll does 1d6+4 points of piercing damage.  Now, I have an 8th level cleric in a 5e game with 50 (ish) HP.  So, Mr. Troll crits my character who is unhurt beforehand, and deals maximum damage.  20 points.  Now, in 5e, no damage that doesn't drop me below half shows on my character other than minor bumps and bruises and the like.  Nothing you wouldn't get from a hard day of exercise.  So, that troll bites me as hard as it possibly can and I show nothing more than a bruise and maybe not even that.
> 
> So, how do you narrate it?  You could narrate it as scraping off my armor.  Or you could narrate it as snapping closed just inches from my nose, causing my life to flash before my eyes and leaving me somewhat shaken.  Both narrations are perfectly fine as far as the mechanics go.
> 
> It seems to me, that insisting that every hit MUST be some sort of physical hit is far more limiting to people's narrations.  You flat out cannot narrate that attack as dealing any real impact, by the rules.  So, why the insistince that every "hit" must be some sort of impact?  It's not like HP actually mean anything.  They mean whatever you want them to mean whenever you want them to mean that.
> 
> For really creative people, I find gamers very stuck in some serious ruts when it comes to creativity.




QFT 
 The HP mechanic only works at all because people are so familiar with it. Once you get people to skip all their completely rational objections when they first play an rpg, it sticks forever. A sort of mass willful delusion.

What I don't understand is why so many games stick with it as a system when so many other systems have been devised that serve any particular purpose much better.



Hussar said:


> And, really, this goes right back to my original point about this just being edition warring in funny glasses.  EVERY edition of D&D, regardless of E was the same.  HP were never given any real meaning. The only difference is 4e made that up front and apparent and suddenly forced people to realize that the way they were playing wasn't actually supported by the mechanics.  5e does exactly the same thing as 4e, but, suddenly all these discussions about "disassociation" go by the wayside because people LIKE 5e.  If abstractions were actually the problem, then it would be a problem in every edition, but, the arguments are entirely self serving.




That's true enough, too. Although I find it more odd in the reverse direction. OSR folks talking like 1e was some sort of physics engine with no meta-mechanics or abstractions just baffles me. 5e "runs" a lot like early editions, so that return-to-form counts as a psychological victory for the "disassociation" hounds.


----------



## Ratskinner

Hussar said:


> Like I've always said, the issue with 4e has very little to do with substance and everything to do with presentation.  Rewrite 4e in 5e style and suddenly the differences between 4e and 5e mechanically are very, very small.




I'll disagree a little bit here.* Not that there isn't a point here, 4e is mechanically much less of a mechanical outlier than is commonly presumed, IMO. Personally, I never quite understood the objection to AEDU powers, recharging, etc. But I would highlight one substantive difference as important to the impression the game made. Its hard to put a name on it, but the specificity-ness and number of powers was an important change. It had many people I know looking at their characters more like a deck of cards. While that's not a tremendous _structural_ difference in the core functional conceits of the game, it ends up being a pretty big deal at the table. 


*as I presume everyone who gripes about how you can't do a Warlord in 5e cause blah blah action economy blah blah other stuff must agree as well.


----------



## Jay Verkuilen

Tony Vargas said:


> Of course, familiarity also makes things fade into the background.  After the 1e DMG defended hps, the remaining issues with it were just lived with so long they faded away - to the point that even /fixing/ them, would draw the abstraction of the system back into the limelight, again.
> <snip> the only plausible explanation that doesn't paint the complainer as blowing smoke while working some nefarious agenda, is the power of familiarity.  When the keywords weren't labeled as such and faded into the baroque mosaic of Gygaxian prose, they were just an unexamined part of broader understanding of the whole game.




IMO this is a huge part of it. 4E in many respects was a vastly more consistent game than prior versions of D&D, absolutely. Its very presentation rubbed that difference in the face of experienced players. 




> In another thread, I think, someone mentioned that 4e had so many more conditions than 3e or 5e and that was one of the things that slowed it down.  4e had 18 conditions.  3e has 40, 5e has 15.




I mentioned the issue. The thing about 3E and 5E is that conditions don't seem to be nearly as common as 4E. 4E certainly had fewer total number of conditions than 3E but many more classes dished them out than before. In prior versions of the game they were relatively rare except for the caster characters or, of course, monsters. Nearly any character class dished out conditions and many builds were intricately synergized to make use of conditions granted by someone else. This was cool in many ways, but like a lot of things they could get to be too much. Some powers would have conditions that superseded another one, such as slow being superseded by immobilization. A lot of times I'd find myself thinking of whether I wanted to use a particular power due to the fact that I might end up blocking out someone else's or making mine not matter. Most notably, I'd get annoyed playing a defender in a party with another defender because people would constantly supersede my mark. Yeah, that's on them I suppose, but the thing is that the system really demanded a lot of players; quite a few I played with didn't seem to be up to the job. 

Analogy: Sometimes I want a burger with a plain bun, some good deli cheese, and mustard with a decent lager or ale, not 48 day aged wagyu beef with balsamic reduction sauce drizzled out of a squeeze bottle on brioche topped by microgreens and raclette and IPA made with yeast from the brewer's beard. IMO 5E is more like the basic burger done really well (for the most part) whereas 4E was much more like the 48 day aged wagyu in terms of all the options. To be clear, I don't have a ton of nostalgia for 1E's pretentious bizarreness and and BTB 2E's slightly cleaned up version. That's kind of like making overcooked burgers back in the '70s with supermarket meat and Kraft slices and drinking Schlitz. I'm happy to have modern innovations, but 4E (for my taste) was too much. 

I will say this: I'm quite sure coping with Gygax's writing helped my GRE Verbal score.


----------



## Tony Vargas

Jay Verkuilen said:


> IMO this is a huge part of it. 4E in many respects was a vastly more consistent game than prior versions of D&D, absolutely. Its very presentation rubbed that difference in the face of experienced players.



 That sounds like such a mean thing to do, if you assume consistency is bad...



> The thing about 3E and 5E is that conditions don't seem to be nearly as common as 4E. 4E certainly had fewer total number of conditions than 3E but many more classes dished them out than before.



More classes able to impose some of 18 conditions doesn't necessarily translate to more than 40 conditions coming  up in play. 
Monsters still impose conditions, for instance, regardless of class distribution, and an all-caster party could certainly impose a tremendous amount in 3e - they were just even more likely to end the fight outright in doing so.


> In prior versions of the game they were relatively rare except for the caster characters



 But it's not like casters were rare in the party.  If you go back and read some of the old story hours from that era, for instance, you see some all-caster parties - and never see no-caster parties.



> Most notably, I'd get annoyed playing a defender in a party with another defender because people would constantly supersede my mark. Yeah, that's on them I suppose,



 Imposing a mark is voluntary, so you could choose not to overwrite a mark  - once one defender has gotten chewed up enough, the other can start marking - such tag-teaming could really mess with enemies' focus fire.



> I will say this: I'm quite sure coping with Gygax's writing helped my GRE Verbal score.



 Heh - It is a nerd game, afterall...


----------



## Jay Verkuilen

Tony Vargas said:


> That sounds like such a mean thing to do, if you assume consistency is bad...




Nope, but the very fact that many things that had been part of the game for a long time were basically dumped out---heck they changed the entire cosmology and alignment system!---was jarring, to say the least. Again, as I've said before, there were cool aspects to the 4E cosmology and a lot of 4E's design. However, when a brand so drastically decides to change core parts of its identity and then rub its audience's collective faces in those changes... look out. 




> More classes able to impose some of 18 conditions doesn't necessarily translate to more than 40 conditions coming  up in play.
> Monsters still impose conditions, for instance, regardless of class distribution, and an all-caster party could certainly impose a tremendous amount in 3e - they were just even more likely to end the fight outright in doing so.
> But it's not like casters were rare in the party.  If you go back and read some of the old story hours from that era, for instance, you see some all-caster parties - and never see no-caster parties.




Oh, I played a lot of 3.X, mostly 3.5, and ran a good bit of it too so I recall. I'm not saying 3E didn't have its burdens. Notoriously, high level "fighter math" could get pretty nuts, especially for players who were slow at mental arithmetic. That said, I don't ever recall needing the likes of condition chips to keep track of all the conditions or having to go through a play loop where I'd check for synergies and then figure out what conditions I had on me that blocked me from doing things basically every round, though. 




> Imposing a mark is voluntary, so you could choose not to overwrite a mark  - once one defender has gotten chewed up enough, the other can start marking - such tag-teaming could really mess with enemies' focus fire.




Yes, tactically savvy players would do that and it was indeed one of the things that 4E did very well. Unfortunately, a lot of folks wouldn't remember without prompting, get greedy for immediate damage, or would forget due to long turn length, which meant it was a burden to keep them from busting up carefully laid plans. 4E with a group of really tactically savvy players capable of keeping turns fast was fun for those reasons, though I still felt it was very wargamey. One reason I embraced 5E so much was how much faster its turn length seemed to be.


----------



## Tony Vargas

Jay Verkuilen said:


> Nope, but the very fact that many things that had been part of the game for a long time were basically dumped out---heck they changed the entire cosmology and alignment system!---was jarring, to say the least.



 To existing players deeply invested, yes.  New players, not at all. And that's how it always seemed to play out, too, IMX.  New players would understand and take to the game easily, those jarred by it's changes wouldn't just complain about the changes, they'd find faults that weren't there, or complain about issues the game had always had.
The disequilibrium of coping with so many changes, even if they were uniformly for the better,  also opens your eyes to issues you've grown comfortable in ignoring.

It's uncomfortably analogous to process of social change.



> Oh, I played a lot of 3.X, mostly 3.5, and ran a good bit of it too so I recall. I'm not saying 3E didn't have its burdens. Notoriously, high level "fighter math" could get pretty nuts, especially for players who were slow at mental arithmetic



 That's gotta be the least of it.  Maybe if you were good at the mental arithmetic of optimal power attacking you could drag your fighter into Tier 4, able to solidly excel in one area. 

It was the casters, particularly the Tier 1s, that suffered from the greatest complexity in 3.x, of course.  On top of build complexity & a little more varied uses of mental arithmetic, there was the vast pool of spells to optimally prep every day & optimally cast as meeded...



> . That said, I don't ever recall needing the likes of condition chips to keep track of all the conditions or having to go through a play loop where I'd check for synergies and then figure out what conditions I had on me that blocked me from doing things basically every round, though.



 I guess you weren't the one using a white board to track spell durrations.  And, as much credit as we gave 4e for tactical depth in a given turn (and as much grief as that got for slow turn cycles), 3e (and often earlier eds) tended to front load those considerations in planning sessions and pre-casting - until an effect got dispelled or anything else unexpected happened,  then the responsible caster needed to reevaluate and think about his next turn tactically. 

It was another if the many changes.  Yes, 4e eliminated more than half the conditions, and far more than half the named bonuses, and that was a simplifying consolidation, but it also put daily resources and at least the option of applying effects (depending on build) to every character class & concept.  



> Yes, tactically savvy players would do that and it was indeed one of the things that 4E did very well.



 Ive run for a lot of new players over the decades, and a lot if casuals since Encounters (IMX, 'casual player' just wasn't a thing for about 20 years prior to that), and they'll just naturally attack different targets, no matter how simple and obvious focus fire may be, it's not intuitive it's a result of the way hps model damage.

So, yeah, there's a sophomore stage of tactical savvy where dueling marks might be a tad problematic (and overlapping defender auras worse), until you think to talk to each other, before and after that, though it's a pretty decent 'aggro' mechanic, even the aura version.



> , though I still felt it was very wargamey. One reason I embraced 5E so much was how much faster its turn length seemed to be.



 D&D started as a wargames and kept characteristics thereof, throughout. Probably one if those negative qualities habitually ignored until 'in your face' changes re-eopen your eyes to it.

Turns go faster in 5e, yes.  Heck most turns probably went faster in 3e, even though, IMX, you could easily fit as many combats into a session. 
Some classes just traditiomlly have fewer and faster to resolve actions available to them.  An attack roll can be over in seconds if the choice or target is fixed (melee type in a 'static' combat), and the attack roll obviously low.  That's a very fast turn. That could happen in 4e, as well, but everyone had the option to do something more, of they'd chosen a power at level-up that had more to it, and used it. Other classes could traditionally have much more involved turns, casters could, by mid level 3e have more slot/wand/scroll buttons to choose from than any 30th level 4e character.

So one thing going on was that casters were getting less time on their turns, and had a longer wait for their turns to come up again.  And, with anyone able to take a more involved turn, if they wanted to, a lot did.  

OTOH, a lot if the decision complexity of a traditional, especially a 3e Tier 1, caster could be front-loaded before the fight. Picking spells for the day after gathering as much information as possible, scrying, planning, pre-casting, etc.

That was very much the experience I had when first switching to 4e.  Our group had played 3.0/5 for the full run, and had always been able to get 3 combats into a session, pretty consistently.  4e came along and we started noticing that turns took longer and rounds longer to come back around. We also noticed that, in some combats the monsters would 'die too soon,' before some cool gambit or combo could be completed.

But, strangely, we were still doing 3 combats per session.  The most evident reason was rules - in 3e we were always looking up, parsing and, debating rules.  In 4e we still looked up rules (no giant DDI character sheets, yet), but they were clear, and didn't often need to be looked up again, let alone debated.  
But, the other thing was that there was less 'analysis paralysis' before combat: the wizard only prepped a few spells, picking from 3 alternatives per slot, at the start of the day, the cleric & paladin didn't need to, at all.  There was no pre-cast buff-layering, no rock/paper/scissors/lizard/Spock of prepping & planning & making/buying...


----------



## Jay Verkuilen

Tony Vargas said:


> To existing players deeply invested, yes.  New players, not at all. And that's how it always seemed to play out, too, IMX.  New players would understand and take to the game easily, those jarred by it's changes wouldn't just complain about the changes, they'd find faults that weren't there, or complain about issues the game had always had.
> The disequilibrium of coping with so many changes, even if they were uniformly for the better,  also opens your eyes to issues you've grown comfortable in ignoring.




Sure, though IMO WotC brought a lot of that on themselves by doing things like wholesale changing the cosmology and alignment systems as well as forcing every character to be a Vancian spellcaster in function. That really bugged the heck out of a lot of people I played with. "Wait, I'm a fighter but I have all these powers...?" 




> It's uncomfortably analogous to process of social change.




It's not analogous, it is an example of social change. 




> That's gotta be the least of it.  Maybe if you were good at the mental arithmetic of optimal power attacking you could drag your fighter into Tier 4, able to solidly excel in one area.




The multiple attacks and all the damage dice got annoying even if you precomputed things like Power Attack. I used color coded dice, which helped a ton, and that's something I continue to do---I wish other people would do the same. Kind of like wearing Dial. (Not the Dial, I'm totally allergic to it.)  




> I guess you weren't the one using a white board to track spell durrations.




Actually that was me, but at that point it was a very high level campaign and we were tracking buffs. Mostly though I don't recall needing to do that but it was very, very useful in 4E. 




> And, as much credit as we gave 4e for tactical depth in a given turn (and as much grief as that got for slow turn cycles), 3e (and often earlier eds) tended to front load those considerations in planning sessions and pre-casting - until an effect got dispelled or anything else unexpected happened,  then the responsible caster needed to reevaluate and think about his next turn tactically.




Yeah, that certainly was the case but I tended to feel that every turn in 4E was like that, especially at higher levels. 4E ran smoothly and well at low levels. 




> It was another if the many changes.  Yes, 4e eliminated more than half the conditions, and far more than half the named bonuses, and that was a simplifying consolidation, but it also put daily resources and at least the option of applying effects (depending on build) to every character class & concept.




Exactly. A lot of the consolidation was good IMO. I long felt that 3.X was too granular in a lot of areas, particularly skills. 




> Ive run for a lot of new players over the decades, and a lot if casuals since Encounters (IMX, 'casual player' just wasn't a thing for about 20 years prior to that), and they'll just naturally attack different targets, no matter how simple and obvious focus fire may be, it's not intuitive it's a result of the way hps model damage. So, yeah, there's a sophomore stage of tactical savvy where dueling marks might be a tad problematic (and overlapping defender auras worse), until you think to talk to each other, before and after that, though it's a pretty decent 'aggro' mechanic, even the aura version.




A lot of people never seem to get out of that sophomore stage IMO. 




> D&D started as a wargames and kept characteristics thereof, throughout. Probably one if those negative qualities habitually ignored until 'in your face' changes re-eopen your eyes to it.




That and the fact that minis were assumed with all distances given in terms of squares. Bow ranges got quite small, for instance.  




> Turns go faster in 5e, yes.  Heck most turns probably went faster in 3e, even though, IMX, you could easily fit as many combats into a session.
> Some classes just traditiomlly have fewer and faster to resolve actions available to them.  An attack roll can be over in seconds if the choice or target is fixed (melee type in a 'static' combat), and the attack roll obviously low.  That's a very fast turn. That could happen in 4e, as well, but everyone had the option to do something more, of they'd chosen a power at level-up that had more to it, and used it. Other classes could traditionally have much more involved turns, casters could, by mid level 3e have more slot/wand/scroll buttons to choose from than any 30th level 4e character.




Yes, this is why I say that 4E made everybody a Vancian caster. Not literally but in terms of the rules, particularly in the original version pre-Essentials. So every character had that burden. 




> So one thing going on was that casters were getting less time on their turns, and had a longer wait for their turns to come up again.  And, with anyone able to take a more involved turn, if they wanted to, a lot did.




Interrupts and attacks on a minor action were hell and often led to a "wait, whose turn is this, anyway?" I _hated_ being in a party with a barbarian or a PHB2 bard. 




> That was very much the experience I had when first switching to 4e.  Our group had played 3.0/5 for the full run, and had always been able to get 3 combats into a session, pretty consistently.  4e came along and we started noticing that turns took longer and rounds longer to come back around. We also noticed that, in some combats the monsters would 'die too soon,' before some cool gambit or combo could be completed.




I tended to find that 4E monsters had too many hit points and not enough offense. I would frequently up their damage and cut their hit points to about 75%.


----------



## Tony Vargas

Jay Verkuilen said:


> as well as forcing every character to be a Vancian spellcaster in function. That really bugged the heck out of a lot of people I played with. "Wait, I'm a fighter but I have all these powers...?"



 The added complexity of puting 'manuever' on every Martial power, 'spell' on the arcane, etc, and burying the 'power' generalization in a sidebar somewhere might've helped.  
But, seriously, only the Wizard was Vancian.  And saying that having a daily makes you a caster in function is factually false, and extremely contentious phrasing.  
It is fair to say that players long accustomed to the innately imbalanced and genre-contrary D&Dism of giving only casters high-power, limited use abilities, could jump, wrongly, to that conclusion.   But it is important to understand that they were absolutely wrong to do so, and that continuing to do so, knowingly, was s hallmark of h4ter edition warring.

It's also yet another example of the phenomena:  in 4e, no single-class fighter could cast a spell, not even metaphorically, in 5e a single-class fighter of the Eldritch Knight martial archetype begins actually, litterally, casting, actual spells at 3rd level, and it's a non-issue.



> It's not analogous, it is an example of social change.



 A trivial one.



> The multiple attacks and all the damage dice got annoying even if you precomputed things like Power Attack



 Always seemed pretty minor to me, though I'd mix Power Attack and Combat Expertise with Spring Attack, reach,  & Combat Reflexes to force a modest degree of tactical interest onto a fighter build.  Problem was at low levels you were left cursing opportunities that passed you by before you had the right feat; while by the time you had the full set and could pull those cool tricks, they were obviates by the types of foes you faced and the magic your party brought to the table.



> Actually that was me, but at that point it was a very high level campaign and we were tracking buffs.



 I keep doing that, sorry...



> Yeah, that certainly was the case but I tended to feel that every turn in 4E was like that, especially at higher levels. 4E ran smoothly and well at low levels.



 It really depended on the table and how you came at it.
You actually could play paragon or epic 'cold," say with pregens,  but combat ran much slower than if you were playing a character that you'd leveled up, 'organically,' yourself.  For established players, the first few times could be really slow, too, until you got used to actually having choices, as a non-caster, and as a caster, to your one optimal use of a daily, at best, swinging an encounter rather than 'pwning' it. 



> Exactly. A lot of the consolidation was good IMO. I long felt that 3.X was too granular in a lot of areas, particularly skills.



 I've long had a pet peeve over long skill lists and open-ended skills, 3e had both, not nearly so bad as many other games, but as bad as D&D ever had it.



> That and the fact that minis were assumed with all distances given in terms of squares. Bow ranges got quite small, for instance.



 Not because they were in squares, though.  3e used 5' squares, and let you convert from ft to aquares, constantly.  4e used 5' squares for everything and simplified it.  Both were spuriously criticised as 'grid dependent' compared to AD&D, which used scale inches that could be either 10' or 10yds, depending, and didn't match the scale of the minis it was used with, which was closer to 1" = 6' anyway - That's not "grid independent," just needlessly complicated

5e's roughly between 3e & AD&D, that way.



> Yes, this is why I say that 4E made everybody a Vancian caster. Not literally but in terms of the rules, particularly in the original version pre-Essentials. So every character had that burden.



 That is incorrect, even metaphorically, in terms of rules: only Wizards (pre-Essentials) prepared spells each day, only they had that 'burden' (of superior versatility)... And it was a much smaller burden.



> Interrupts and attacks on a minor action were hell and often led to a "wait, whose turn is this, anyway?" I _hated_ being in a party with a barbarian or a PHB2 bard.



 Minor action attacks were beloved of Charop (so suspect), but virtually identical to 5e bonus action attacks, and less complicated than 3e iterative attacks - and also much less common than either.  And, it's not like 5e bonus actions have the shield of tradition or familiarity.
Off-turn actions are needed to render cyclical turn based initiative less absurd, and 3.0 through 5e all use them. 5e, arguably, not enough to avoid the cyclical round becoming absurd.  In 4e, power choice could allow you to all but specialize in them, or eschew them almost entirely.



> I tended to find that 4E monsters had too many hit points and not enough offense. I would frequently up their damage and cut their hit points to about 75%.



 You'd rob yourself if some of the fantasy/action genre cadence of combat that way, but half hps/double damage was a commonly-mentioned variant (though I can't say I ever saw anyone use it - the closest was one convention game where the DM doubled all damage, PC & monster, after (on?) the third round.)
The 13A escalation die could have been nice for 4e, if Heinsoo had thought of it 6yrs earlier...


----------



## Lanefan

pemerton said:


> 5e uses keywords much as 4e does, but it just buries them in the text (so we have to read through a paragraph of text to learn that a fireball does fire damage).



Er...don't take this the wrong way, but anyone who has to read through anything and rely on finding a keyword to specify that a fireball does fire damage is...well...I'll be charitable and just say they're either overthinking it or underthinking it.

Sheesh!



> This creates an illusion of resemblance to AD&D, but in fact I don't think 5e uses much natural language at all to mediate between the mechanics of class abilities (including spells) and the fiction. It uses keywords in much the same way that 4e did.



One reaction I had to all the keywords, first in 3e and then further on seeing 4e, was that their constant use made the whole game feel more...I suppose prepackaged, for lack of a better term.  In and of itself this isn't necessarily a bad thing, but along with it came a strong sense of things having been tweaked and shoehorned in order to make them fit these keywords, rather than be more freeform.

They also came across as an obvious statement that the same company that designed M:tG was now also at the helm of D&D.


----------



## MichaelSomething

So if I want people to like 4E, all I need to do is rewrite all the powers into Gygaxian prose??


----------



## Sadras

MichaelSomething said:


> So if I want people to like 4E, all I need to do is rewrite all the powers into Gygaxian prose??




This is an interesting question. I have often wondered how could one improve on 4E - presentation as well as the actual system, including to make it easier to tinker with.

EDIT: And when I mean improve - I mean a natural evolution of that style game. And no, I don't mean 5e


----------



## Jay Verkuilen

Tony Vargas said:


> The added complexity of puting 'manuever' on every Martial power, 'spell' on the arcane, etc, and burying the 'power' generalization in a sidebar somewhere might've helped.
> But, seriously, only the Wizard was Vancian.  And saying that having a daily makes you a caster in function is factually false, and extremely contentious phrasing. <snip>




I said "in function" and... 



> It is fair to say that players long accustomed to the innately imbalanced and genre-contrary D&Dism of giving only casters high-power, limited use abilities, could jump, wrongly, to that conclusion.   But it is important to understand that they were absolutely wrong to do so, and that continuing to do so, knowingly, was s hallmark of h4ter edition warring.




That's the part many people really didn't like, myself included. All right if you'd rather, it's high-power, limited use powers. I'm willing to buy it for casters, to some degree, but it really bugged me for martial characters. Various people came up with post hoc rationalizations "Think of it as picking your moment to shine" or other things, but ultimately until Essentials the martial classes felt weird and wrong to me. And yeah, I held my nose and played them, but I really, really hated daily powers for martial characters. Encounters were annoying, but bugged me less. They were a classic example of forcing the same logic onto every type. I was much happier with stances, which I think was a clever idea that really should have been kept in 5E and used more for a number of characters. The limited resource in this case is the choice of which stance you're in. IMO this would work great for the bard rather than being a full spellcaster, where different songs work as different stances. 

(Yes, I really dislike the general Vancian "fire and forget" mentality applied broadly. I'm OK with it as being part of how D&D functions for some class types like the wizard and as a compromise for priests, but absolutely don't want an extension of it.) 




> It's also yet another example of the phenomena:  in 4e, no single-class fighter could cast a spell, not even metaphorically, in 5e a single-class fighter of the Eldritch Knight martial archetype begins actually, litterally, casting, actual spells at 3rd level, and it's a non-issue.




IMO that's fine because it's an actual part of the class's backplot and exists in the game world: "You're a fighter who's learned a bit of magic on the side." 




> Always seemed pretty minor to me, though I'd mix Power Attack and Combat Expertise with Spring Attack, reach,  & Combat Reflexes to force a modest degree of tactical interest onto a fighter build.  Problem was at low levels you were left cursing opportunities that passed you by before you had the right feat; while by the time you had the full set and could pull those cool tricks, they were obviates by the types of foes you faced and the magic your party brought to the table.




Yeah, that's often an issue. The benefit of savoring things you don't have but are building towards versus having too many options or having options that are empty ones due to foes being immune to them. IME, high level fighter types were still quite valuable in 3E, though, but that required a savvy player and the DM making things work, whereas 4E is much more relentlessly game balanced, so much so that I often felt the heavy hand of the game designer. 

There were two "fighter math" problems. The harder one was figuring out when to Power Attack and if so by how much. (Best to just make it a default value and call it a day rather than "dial a yield.") The other was just the burden of rolling all those dice and doing a bunch of two digit arithmetic. Some people just stink at that and often won't be willing to learn the kinds of strategies that lead to speed up, such as learning to group dice in groups of fives and tens. 




> It really depended on the table and how you came at it.
> You actually could play paragon or epic 'cold," say with pregens,  but combat ran much slower than if you were playing a character that you'd leveled up, 'organically,' yourself.  For established players, the first few times could be really slow, too, until you got used to actually having choices, as a non-caster, and as a caster, to your one optimal use of a daily, at best, swinging an encounter rather than 'pwning' it.




IME some people just never really managed to speed up. Of course the ones that had this the worst were the really hard core optimizer types---the ones who inevitably gravitated towards classes like barbarian and avenger---but a Paragon or Epic tier sheet just got ridic, especially when you factored in magic items. The fact that the power cards were often inaccurate or too abbreviated in various ways. 

I got into it with a player here who insisted on using spell cards in 5E. The cards often left out key details. He finally got D&DBeyond and looks things up on his phone. 




> I've long had a pet peeve over long skill lists and open-ended skills, 3e had both, not nearly so bad as many other games, but as bad as D&D ever had it.




IMO it's one reason I dislike tools proficiencies. Some of them are OK but for the most part they're just useless in most games. By contrast Thievery should just be a skill. 




> Not because they were in squares, though.  3e used 5' squares, and let you convert from ft to aquares, constantly.  4e used 5' squares for everything and simplified it.  Both were spuriously criticised as 'grid dependent' compared to AD&D, which used scale inches that could be either 10' or 10yds, depending, and didn't match the scale of the minis it was used with, which was closer to 1" = 6' anyway - That's not "grid independent," just needlessly complicated




To be clear, I don't actually mind squares but there's just no doubt that things like bow ranges were drastically shortened in 4E so they would fit on expected battlemap sizes. 




> Minor action attacks were beloved of Charop (so suspect), but virtually identical to 5e bonus action attacks, and less complicated than 3e iterative attacks - and also much less common than either.  And, it's not like 5e bonus actions have the shield of tradition or familiarity.




The thing is that bonus action attacks are usually quite limited, but it was often possible to chain together bigger attacks in prior versions. You've got one bonus action and one reaction, end of story. I also liked the idea of sacrificing an action (e.g., the bonus action or, even better, the reaction) to maintain concentration rather than the way concentration works now. 

I think they got a little rigid and would be OK with a regular action being reduced to a bonus action, for instance. 




> Off-turn actions are needed to render cyclical turn based initiative less absurd, and 3.0 through 5e all use them. 5e, arguably, not enough to avoid the cyclical round becoming absurd.  In 4e, power choice could allow you to all but specialize in them, or eschew them almost entirely.




_Some_ off-turn is OK, but some 4E characters had just way too much of that and a lot of it was so situational that for a lot of builds it was useless. The PHB2 Bard was an example. In a game we had, one of the characters was a drow bard named Kortuss. The bard could move allies around. This left the player asking "does anyone want to get moved?" at the end of nearly everyone's turn with the answer almost always being "no, I ended up exactly where I wanted to be." His nickname was, of course Kortuss Interruptus. 




> You'd rob yourself if some of the fantasy/action genre cadence of combat that way, but half hps/double damage was a commonly-mentioned variant (though I can't say I ever saw anyone use it - the closest was one convention game where the DM doubled all damage, PC & monster, after (on?) the third round.)




I don't get what I'm robbing myself of. 4E monsters frequently felt like a punching bag to me, way too little offense compared to their staying power and many of their powers and synergies were boring. I didn't find most of their status effects that interesting, although some of them are good: Forced movement was an excellent idea, as is prone. That really reinforces the theme of a monster like a giant that it does damage to you and frequently pushes foes smaller than it and/or knocks prone. In 5E I really like things like that and tend to reintroduce them. 

During 4E after not running anything else for a fair bit, I ran some 2E (our old version with lots of house rules) and felt "wow, _this_ is what I remember!" when I had the characters fight a mountain giant. The fights were much faster and nastier. The mountain giant's attacks felt very threatening. Now the mountain giant is an example of a very high threat monster (base damage 4D10!) but still, the more limited hit points and higher general damage makes fights feel much more nail biter-y. 

I'm still running that 2E game though due to it being online we have adopted a number of 4Eisms, such as all movement or areas of effect are just squares. I get pretty good outcomes, but this is probably an example of something that really only works because of the group of us. We've played this game for many years and all the players are very experienced. 

Part of this is probably me. I never really had a feel for 4E's numbers the way I felt some other DMs did, but quite honestly once I felt that 5E was a solid (if not perfect) game, I said "goodbye". 




> The 13A escalation die could have been nice for 4e, if Heinsoo had thought of it 6yrs earlier...




IMO that's a good idea but it's so totally, utterly out of the game world it just bugs the !#@$@#$ out of me. I don't mind that if there's something in a fight that makes something like that happen and have used things like that in the past, for instance by introducing some kind of creature that shifted the odds and made overall combat more violent, but on _every_ fight? It just feels like a game mechanic that's grafted on to make combat faster and to force a different dynamic at the end of a fight and prevent people from nova-ing right at the beginning. I dislike it for exactly the same reason I dislike high-power, limited-use abilities applied outside of the context of a spellcaster. 

I don't know if "really clever but unmoored game mechanics" was Heinsoo's specialty, but if so it would go a long way towards explaining why I felt that was a hallmark of 4E. 

Hmm... in fine GRE Verbal fashion, 13A:4E:athfinder:3E? 

That said, there are some damned good ideas in 13A, just as there are in 4E. I really like the Archetypes as part of the world and damage scaling by level is also a very good way of cutting down on rolls without undoing the theme of the characters.)


----------



## Jay Verkuilen

Lanefan said:


> Er...don't take this the wrong way, but anyone who has to read through anything and rely on finding a keyword to specify that a fireball does fire damage is...well...I'll be charitable and just say they're either overthinking it or underthinking it.









> One reaction I had to all the keywords, first in 3e and then further on seeing 4e, was that their constant use made the whole game feel more...I suppose prepackaged, for lack of a better term.  In and of itself this isn't necessarily a bad thing, but along with it came a strong sense of things having been tweaked and shoehorned in order to make them fit these keywords, rather than be more freeform.
> 
> They also came across as an obvious statement that the same company that designed M:tG was now also at the helm of D&D.




Yeah, 4E in particular had the heavy hand of the game designer. It had a very Lawful Neutral design philosophy IMO. I feel much more able to tweak or alter both 3E and 5E, but the intricacies and degree of pre-definition of 4E made me really reticent to do much of anything except make up a few monsters and items. Even then I felt that was quite difficult to do in a way I never felt in prior versions of the game. I really didn't feel much license to do so, either, like it really wasn't something the designers _invited_ me to do. Yes there are spots they said "make this your own" but I never felt they actually meant it, kind of like an IT department that says "we're here to help you do your job" but you know based on all the restrictions they put on your computer that they don't actually mean it.


----------



## pemerton

Lanefan said:


> Er...don't take this the wrong way, but anyone who has to read through anything and rely on finding a keyword to specify that a fireball does fire damage is...well...I'll be charitable and just say they're either overthinking it or underthinking it.
> 
> Sheesh!



Well, two things:

(1) 5e uses damage keywords just as 4e did. It just buries them in the text of spell descriptions.

(2) When I started a thread to check whether or not 5e players/GMs thought that fire-type spells could set things alight, many answered no - that only if the spell description said so could it happen.

Contrast 4e, which - in the DMG - points out that the function of keywords is to clearly convey what is going on in the fiction (so eg a gauze curtain or stack of books might take more damage from _fire_ effects).



Lanefan said:


> One reaction I had to all the keywords, first in 3e and then further on seeing 4e, was that their constant use made the whole game feel more...I suppose prepackaged, for lack of a better term.



I find it quite the opposite. The 4e description of the Fireball spell is very close to the Moldvay Basic one. Whereas the AD&D description, and 3E description, are full of stuff (about blast pressure; about volume; about setting things alight and melting gold; etc) which are obviously rulings from various TSR GM's games, which are now being served up to the play community as rules. It's karaoke.

Whereas 4e leaves it up to each table to decide eg how hard is it for a spell that deals cold damage to freeze a puddle? Or for another spell that does fire damage to melt it again.


----------



## Sadras

pemerton said:


> The 4e description of the Fireball spell is very close to the Moldvay Basic one.




Your point? It was called Basic for a reason the book had a page limit. 



> Whereas the AD&D description, and 3E description, are full of stuff (about blast pressure; about volume; about setting things alight and melting gold; etc) which are obviously rulings from various TSR GM's games, which are now being served up to the play community as rules. It's karaoke.




That is what the Advanced stood for so one could expect more playable races, races distinct from classes, more classes, much more detailed alignment system, skills/proficiencies, more weapons and armour...and more detailed spells. It is advanced karaoke.



> Whereas 4e leaves it up to each table to decide eg how hard is it for a spell that deals cold damage to freeze a puddle? Or for another spell that does fire damage to melt it again.




You must have missed all the threads discussing the physics of rope trick and almost every other AD&D spell.


----------



## Jay Verkuilen

pemerton said:


> Well, two things:
> 
> (1) 5e uses damage keywords just as 4e did. It just buries them in the text of spell descriptions.




IMO keywords aren't particularly bad. Even having them in the spell header rather than the text isn't a bad thing at all. 




> I find it quite the opposite. The 4e description of the Fireball spell is very close to the Moldvay Basic one. Whereas the AD&D description, and 3E description, are full of stuff (about blast pressure; about volume; about setting things alight and melting gold; etc) which are obviously rulings from various TSR GM's games, which are now being served up to the play community as rules. It's karaoke.
> 
> Whereas 4e leaves it up to each table to decide eg how hard is it for a spell that deals cold damage to freeze a puddle? Or for another spell that does fire damage to melt it again.




I tended to ignore a lot of the "fireball physics" parts except to note that fireball _didn't_ generate blast effects, filled space, and would often require an item saving throw to determine if it got fried. I'm sure the gold melting part was due to the fact that "treasure = XP" in 1E. But yeah, a number of spells in 1E had excess detail whereas there were others that lacked clear detail. 

Not quite sure what you mean by karaoke, though. 




Sadras said:


> Your point? It was called Basic for a reason the book had a restricted page limit.
> 
> That is what the Advanced stood for so one could expect more playable races, races distinct from classes, more classes, much more detailed alignment system, skills/proficiencies, more weapons and armour...and more detailed spells.




Of course forking D&D into what became Advanced and then BESM were partly to due internal skullduggery in TSR and then some divides in the marketing team. Advanced was always much more clearly aimed at the book and hobby store trade in the USA whereas BECMI sold in toy stores (because boxed sets made sense to their buyers) and, from what I understand, in Europe. It's kind of a pity that things got forked that way as BECMI had some very good ideas---for instance BECMI had the general idea of the prestige class in the _Companion _set---as did Advanced, but ne'er the twain shall meet until 2000.


----------



## Tony Vargas

Jay Verkuilen said:


> Yeah, 4E in particular had the heavy hand of the game designer. It had a very Lawful Neutral design philosophy IMO. I feel much more able to tweak or alter both 3E and 5E, but the intricacies and degree of pre-definition of 4E made me really reticent to do much of anything except make up a few monsters and items.



Complete agreement, here.  I used extensive variants for 1e, and at least some in 3e (though 3e had it's own challenges, due to the overwhelming complexity of the later system, and the sense of 'player entitlement' that enshrined RAW and dismissed house rules out of hand), while 4e, like you, I stuck to making/modding monsters and magic items.  The main reason was that there was little impetuse to use-rule, add or mod anything on the player side, it was all prettymuch balanced/playable, and whatever a player wanted could probably be built 'off the shelf,' with a little re-skinning (players explicitly being allowed to re-skin everything on a power but it's keywords, for instance), so no DM intervention was required there.  That and elaborating on Skill Challenges, of course.

5e got me back into the swing of running in an improvisational style, which I hadn't realized how much I'd missed after, really, giving up on DMing with 3.5, because it was just too much work, and 'phoning it in' with 4e, because it was, at the opposite extreme, almost /too/ easy.  Heck, when I run 4e, now, I tend to run it more improv, and little prep, in spite of how easy the prep is, just because I can squeeze out that little extra bit of fun that way.  



pemerton said:


> (2) When I started a thread to check whether or not 5e players/GMs thought that fire-type spells could set things alight, many answered no - that only if the spell description said so could it happen.
> Contrast 4e, which - in the DMG - points out that the function of keywords is to clearly convey what is going on in the fiction (so eg a gauze curtain or stack of books might take more damage from _fire_ effects).



 To be fair (a) don't 5e fire spells usually mention they can start fires (typically they did in the classic game) and (b) 5e's all about Rulings Not Rules, so if you're not ruling whether a fire spell (or lightning spell, for that matter) sets something on fire, you're just "not doin' it right."
;P


> I find it quite the opposite. The 4e description of the Fireball spell is very close to the Moldvay Basic one. Whereas the AD&D description, and 3E description, are full of stuff (about blast pressure; about volume; about setting things alight and melting gold; etc) which are obviously rulings from various TSR GM's games, which are now being served up to the play community as rules. It's karaoke.
> Whereas 4e leaves it up to each table to decide eg how hard is it for a spell that deals cold damage to freeze a puddle? Or for another spell that does fire damage to melt it again.



How important is that, really?  Mostly, I'd think you could leave that sort of thing up to the spell's little itallic flavor description - which the player had liscence to change.




Jay Verkuilen said:


> I said "in function" and...



 And I said, no, not even "in function."  Consider the actual function of a caster in the classic game.  A 1st level magic-user had 1 spell/'day' (more like 4hrs & 15min, depending on how your DM interpreted the rules), and only knew three besides the obligatory Read Magic. IIF one of those happend to be Sleep, he could trivialize a single encounter with level-appropriate enemies that were vulnerable to it - having done that, he threw darts.  His function was to make a huge difference to the party in one fairly common sort of circumstance, and fade into irrellevance the rest of the time - while still hazarding his life to an absurd degree.  As he gained levels and spells, he could trivialize more sorts of encoutners (and other challenges) more times/day (and eventually the party & their challenges would out-grow 'Sleep'), and could also have spells left over for convenience or creative uses and/or to enable whole adventures so his function expanded a great deal to not only defeating more & more of the day's challenges but to bringing the party into position to even face them in the first place, but, still, when he did finally run out of applicable spells, he was reduced to very lacklustre basic contributions -maybe with a Staff of Striking or Wand of Magic Missles, by this point.  At high level he could, with sufficient DM conniavance, make character-re-defining magic items for himself or members of his party, and rarely ran out of spells (though the time it would take him to prepare a whole slate made the 'per day' aproximation overly generous!), his function was whatever he decided he wanted it to be.

No class in 4e came close to that(those) function(s).  Rather, function in the party was mainly a matter of Role, and the role of the traditional Vancian caster - the Wizard - was unique in the PH (as was his Vancian casting), that of 'Controller.'    

Of course, litteral Vancian casting had prettymuch gone away by 3.0, and even before then 'memorization' was often replaced with the less bizarre 'preparation' (if not with utterly broken 'spell point' systems).  Still, "in function," D&D 'pepped' (Tier 1) casting was the same as old-school Vancian memorization:  at the beginning of the day, you picked a slate of spells from those available to your class (or in your book), choosing both the spells you'd be able to cast that day, and how often you'd be able to cast each of them, leaving you only with the decision of when to cast each one that day.

In 4e, /only/ the wizard retained that dynamic (though not the function, really, his dailies weren't powerful enough at any level for that), though he never really exceeded the function available to a low-mid ("sweet spot") magic-user in 1e (maybe a 3rd-8th level). But, the 4e wizard was still arguably Vancian.  He did still prepare his Daily and Utility spells each morning.  He just prepared each 'stot' from a much more limited set of alternatives.
 To put it more succinctly, the 4e wizard wasn't imbalanced, overpowered or even arguably 'Tier 1.'




> That's the part many people really didn't like, myself included. All right if you'd rather, it's high-power, limited use powers. I'm willing to buy it for casters, to some degree, but it really bugged me for martial characters. Various people came up with post hoc rationalizations "Think of it as picking your moment to shine" or other things, but ultimately until Essentials the martial classes felt weird and wrong to me.



 I'd "rather" characterize encounter & daily powers as limited-user abilities, rather than spells, because that's what they, in fact, were.  And, it's not a post-hoc rationalization.  Powers were designed from the ground up to model genre as well as grandfather in D&Disms like clerical glowy healing and Vancian wizardry, albeit in less-game-wrecking forms.  
In genre, a hero will pull some cunning trick, make some heroic effort, invoke some magical power, or whatever - maybe once, at the climax of the story, maybe once before that as foreshadowing, maybe several times to establish his bonnefides as a mighty warrior, mage, or whatever - what he won't do is button-mash his best trick against every enemy, every time.  There are many possible ways to model that in an RPG, and Vancian 'memorization' is perhaps among the very worst, but D&D went with it (and has been backing away from it ever since!), a combination of routine 'at wills,' establishing short-rest-recharge 'encoutners,' and dramatic 'dailies,' is arguably not among the worst.  It's pretty darn abstract, compared to creating separate sub-systems that, say, let a fencing master 'create openings' or condition opponents to pull off a finsihing move at one point in a given duel, or to let a mage 'gather power' while deflecting/absorbing an impetuous enemy's flashy attacks until he has enough to pull off some great working of arcane might, or let a devout knight stand against the brutal onslaught of a superhuman monster only to have his faith and perserverence rewarded with miraculous victory at the end.  But, abstraction is a price worth paying for playabilty, in a game, IMHO.   
All editions of D&D do pay that same price, some just get better deals for it than others... 



> I was much happier with stances, which I think was a clever idea that really should have been kept in 5E and used more for a number of characters. The limited resource in this case is the choice of which stance you're in. IMO this would work great for the bard rather than being a full spellcaster, where different songs work as different stances.



 That's not really a limited resource (in 4e, stances were typically dailies, becuase an encounter stance would've been all-encounter, every-encounter, and at-will stances would've had to have been trivial for the power available to unlimitted resources - as the Knight/Slayer demonstrated).



> (Yes, I really dislike the general Vancian "fire and forget" mentality applied broadly. I'm OK with it as being part of how D&D functions for some class types like the wizard and as a compromise for priests, but absolutely don't want an extension of it.)



 It wasn't an extention of it, it was a repudiation of Vancian, only the wizard remained Vancian.



> IMO that's fine because it's an actual part of the class's backplot and exists in the game world: "You're a fighter who's learned a bit of magic on the side."



 You could do that in 4e, too, just MC to Wizard, for instance.  The concept of using spells is not, by it's nature, related to the limitation of being able to do something only once before needing to rest in order to do it again.  It's only the long association of D&D Vancian magic that created that disconnect for you.



> Yeah, that's often an issue. The benefit of savoring things you don't have but are building towards versus having too many options or having options that are empty ones due to foes being immune to them. IME, high level fighter types were still quite valuable in 3E, though, but that required a savvy player and the DM making things work, whereas 4E is much more relentlessly game balanced, so much so that I often felt the heavy hand of the game designer.



Spin it all you want, what you just said was that 4e was a better game than 3e.  You weren't wrong.  Not in fact, and not in spin.    A high-level fighter in the classic game was his magic items, period.  A high level fighter in 3e, if it followed one of only a couple of build types, could retain a degree of entertaining tactical relevance in some combats (even most, if the DM leaned a certain way and/or players of casters exercised retraint), but was, overall, increasinly irrellevant to the campaign.  3e's sweet spot topped out at 10th, if not 6th (pre-Polymporph-errata, particularly).  E6 was a great idea for some very solid mechanical reasons.



> There were two "fighter math" problems. The harder one was figuring out when to Power Attack and if so by how much. (Best to just make it a default value and call it a day rather than "dial a yield.") The other was just the burden of rolling all those dice and doing a bunch of two digit arithmetic. Some people just stink at that and often won't be willing to learn the kinds of strategies that lead to speed up, such as learning to group dice in groups of fives and tens.



 Those are both pretty minor, really.  An easy rule of thumb for the former is "don't power attack when you full attack, otherwise, PA 5."  The idea is that the vast majority of enemies at high level are going to be calibrated so that rogues & such, and fighter second itterative attacks, hit pretty dependably, while additional itterative attacks are dicey, so if you move, Spring Attack/WWA, or expect to get a lot of AoOs, PA 5 gives you a damage boost on attacks that'd probably be hitting automatically were it not for the mandatory miss on a natural 1.  



> IME some people just never really managed to speed up. Of course the ones that had this the worst were the really hard core optimizer types---the ones who inevitably gravitated towards classes like barbarian and avenger---but a Paragon or Epic tier sheet just got ridic, especially when you factored in magic items. The fact that the power cards were often inaccurate or too abbreviated in various ways.  I got into it with a player here who insisted on using spell cards in 5E. The cards often left out key details. He finally got D&DBeyond and looks things up on his phone.



 I had not noticed that issue with the power 'cards' (9-up format power descriptions, though the font got absurdly tiny at times) on the DDI sheets, though the feat and feature entries suffered from it horribly.  The off-line version let you edit the descriptions and layout, which was hugely beneficial - I miss that. 
Frankly, if an optimizer - whether abusing a Tier 1 caster or an outre build - is slow, it's his own darn fault.  ;P



> IMO it's one reason I dislike tools proficiencies. Some of them are OK but for the most part they're just useless in most games. By contrast Thievery should just be a skill.



One thing I do like about 5e too proficiencies, in spite of there being a potentially infinite number of them to be incompetent with if you don't have 'em, dovetails with something else I really liked about 5e that was long overdue:  straightforward 'downtime' guidelines.  You can learn a language (also an unduly-open-ended mechanic) or a Tool Proficiency by spending downtime days on it.  So the skills that you can't do that with, are the 'real' skill lists, the rest, essentially, flavor.  (And, yes, the Thief's lock-picking/trap-disarming/&c belongs on the real skill list, I agree.)



> To be clear, I don't actually mind squares but there's just no doubt that things like bow ranges were drastically shortened in 4E so they would fit on expected battlemap sizes.



 Nod.  I mean, they did have ranges in excess of of not one, but two typical battle maps, but whatever.  There was no particular reason not to give a preternatural English-Longbow-of-lengend-inspired archer an implasible 300 yd range.  It's just nothing to do with squares vs feet.  They could've put a range of 30/180 sqs on the longbow if they'd wanted to, as easily as 150'/900' - and more easily than  10/20/30 'scale inches that can be 10 yds out of doors' ... 



> The thing is that bonus action attacks are usually quite limited, but it was often possible to chain together bigger attacks in prior versions. You've got one bonus action and one reaction, end of story. I also liked the idea of sacrificing an action (e.g., the bonus action or, even better, the reaction) to maintain concentration rather than the way concentration works now.



 Sustain was the 4e equivalent of concentration, and did require an action - often a minor action, sometimes even standard.  You can get quite a lot of attacks rolling in 5e, thanks to Extra Attack on top of TWFing for a Bonus Action attack every round, with things like Action Surge & Haste atop that, as well.  In 4e, minor action attacks were rare (mostly available to strikers, and, at Epic, to arcanists via a feat) and mostly encounter powers, never at-wills.  So you could manage a round or even two of minor action attacks, by devoting all your Encounter flexiblity to belting out damage in an Alpha Strike - it was 'optimal' for, well, an Alpha Strike, which was not often an optimal tactic in 4e, really.  



> _Some_ off-turn is OK, but some 4E characters had just way too much of that and a lot of it was so situational that for a lot of builds it was useless.



 Some builds could go that way, if you wanted to take them there.  But, as with minor action attacks, it's not like a given concept forced you to play that given way.  




> I don't get what I'm robbing myself of.



 "some of the fantasy/action genre cadence of combat" - in genre, especially on the more pop-culture/action-movie side of the genre, it's very common for battles to go badly against the heroes, at first, then for them to come back and win.  
Cliche, prettymuch. 

If you're tired of that cliche, and like the idea of heroes beating down the baddies swiftly & decisively, most of the time (while still giving a sense that the baddies are deadly), you can cut monster hps & increase their damage proportionately (like I said, half/double was oft-suggested).  It can be a delicate adjustment, since the other side of 'most of the time,' can end up TPK.



> IMO that's a good idea but it's so totally, utterly out of the game world it just bugs the !#@$@#$ out of me. It just feels like a game mechanic that's grafted on to make combat faster and to force a different dynamic at the end of a fight and prevent people from nova-ing right at the beginning. I dislike it for exactly the same reason I dislike high-power, limited-use abilities



 It's more of the above, really, capturing the way combats actually go in genre (heroic, dramatic, come-from-behind, &c) vs how they go 'realistically' (nasty, short, & one-sided).



> I don't know if "really clever but unmoored game mechanics" was Heinsoo's specialty, but if so it would go a long way towards explaining why I felt that was a hallmark of 4E.



 As I tried to explain above, they're just moored to something else:  to genre conventions, rather than D&D traditions (or worse yet, "realism").  And, yeah, he seems to have a flair for good mechanics like that - both functional as part of a game and evocative of the genre.



> Hmm... in fine GRE Verbal fashion, 13A:4E:athfinder:3E?



 It's been suggested, but not really, no.  Hiensoo & Tweet designed 13A, Tweet never worked on 4e and is generally of a different school of design thought, entirely. There are superficial similarities in mechanics, and a sort of 'compromise' between the design philosphy of 4e & the classic game evident.   
Many of the folks at Paizo worked on 3.5, sure, but PF was an outrigh clone of 3.5, mechanically compatible with it (at least at first), and intended & advertised as a continuation/re-boot.  Not only is 13A not that to 4e, it would be illegal to clone 4e the way PF did 3.5, and Hasbro is as letigious as any other corporation.


----------



## Tony Vargas

MichaelSomething said:


> So if I want people to like 4E, all I need to do is rewrite all the powers into Gygaxian prose??



 I spent a few of my 'formative teenage years' decyphering and immitating what I found in 1e D&D books - I still tend to slide towards the overwrought and verbose...  
...no to mention it's just nostalgic fun to evoke the classic game, whether by re-introducing an items/spell/monster that didn't make the cut, or create a new one suggetive of the presentation & style of the olden days. 

But, no if you had wanted the people who didn't like 4e to like it, you'd've had to re-write the classes to restore LFQW & heighten the impact of the 5MWD, re-write the rules to restore DM fiat, and re-write magic items to be capable of exlipsing character ability/concepts entirely.   

A half-measures attempt to do just that gave us Essentials.



Sadras said:


> This is an interesting question. I have often wondered how could one improve on 4E - presentation as well as the actual system, including to make it easier to tinker with.
> EDIT: And when I mean improve - I mean a natural evolution of that style game. And no, I don't mean 5e



 [MENTION=82106]AbdulAlhazred[/MENTION] 's HoML ( http://www.enworld.org/forum/showthread.php?644220-Towards-a-Story-Now-4e ) is suggetive of that kind of improvement, it's not a professionally done, fully-articulated system but what's he's revealed of it has a lot of intersting ideas.


----------



## Lanefan

pemerton said:


> Well, two things:
> 
> (1) 5e uses damage keywords just as 4e did. It just buries them in the text of spell descriptions.



OK, so 5e's no better than 3e or 4e in that respect.



> (2) When I started a thread to check whether or not 5e players/GMs thought that fire-type spells could set things alight, many answered no - that only if the spell description said so could it happen.



 ::facepalm::

That's on them for letting rules trump common sense and reality.



> Contrast 4e, which - in the DMG - points out that the function of keywords is to clearly convey what is going on in the fiction (so eg a gauze curtain or stack of books might take more damage from _fire_ effects).



This is far, far easier to mechanically replicate by using the saving throw matrices from 1e - paper's save vs. fire, for instance, was massively more difficult than its save vs. cold.  That way, no need to describe or remind DMs of what should be rather obvious.

In different threads I've recently seen several references to 1e's saving throw matrices, none of them complimentary; and for the life of me I can't understand why.  They're one of 1e's better mechanics.



> I find it quite the opposite. The 4e description of the Fireball spell is very close to the Moldvay Basic one. Whereas the AD&D description, and 3E description, are full of stuff (about blast pressure; about volume; about setting things alight and melting gold; etc) which are obviously rulings from various TSR GM's games, which are now being served up to the play community as rules. It's karaoke.
> 
> Whereas 4e leaves it up to each table to decide eg how hard is it for a spell that deals cold damage to freeze a puddle? Or for another spell that does fire damage to melt it again.



Fine; but giving some guidelines, as 1e does, is never a bad thing.

Lanefan


----------



## Sadras

Tony Vargas said:


> AbdulAlhazred 's HoML ( http://www.enworld.org/forum/showthread.php?644220-Towards-a-Story-Now-4e ) is suggestive of that kind of improvement, it's not a professionally done, fully-articulated system but what's he's revealed of it has a lot of interesting ideas.




The inspiration mechanic used with traits, boons/affliction track, fixed hit points, DR, backgrounds, disadvantage/advantage are not new ideas. The level advancement is a nice touch with boons and provides a lot of freedom.

Still waiting to see how he will deal with powers per se but I suspect it might link into the SIEGE mechanic (Castles and Crusades) with degrees of success (essentially DMG42 with degrees of success). That is the only way I have thought of dealing with powers myself, but I'm more curious how powers/class abilities will be presented within the classes

Thanks for the link, I had missed this thread will be following closely.


----------



## R_Chance

Jay Verkuilen said:


> Yeah, 4E in particular had the heavy hand of the game designer. It had a very Lawful Neutral design philosophy IMO. I feel much more able to tweak or alter both 3E and 5E, but the intricacies and degree of pre-definition of 4E made me really reticent to do much of anything except make up a few monsters and items. Even then I felt that was quite difficult to do in a way I never felt in prior versions of the game. I really didn't feel much license to do so, either, like it really wasn't something the designers _invited_ me to do. Yes there are spots they said "make this your own" but I never felt they actually meant it, kind of like an IT department that says "we're here to help you do your job" but you know based on all the restrictions they put on your computer that they don't actually mean it.




I don't think I.ve ever seen my thoughts on 4E put better.


----------



## Sadras

Lanefan said:


> ::facepalm::
> That's on them for letting rules trump common sense and reality.




This is the description given in the PHB for the fire-related spells.

Fireball - the fire spreads around corners, ignites flammable objects in the area that aren't being worn or carried.
Fire Bolt - a flammable object hit by this spell ignites if it isn't being worn or carried.
Fire Shield - shield erupts with flame and damages attacker, no mention of affect on objects
Fire Storm - the fire damages objects in the area and ignites flammable objects that aren't being worn or carried. If you choose plant life in the area is unaffected by the spell.
Flame Blade - no mention of lighting up things.
Flame Strike - strikes the creature - no mention about objects.
Flaming Sphere - the sphere ignites flammable objects not being worn or carried
Produce Flame - no mention on affect on objects.

Most gamers I gamed with ignored the fire affecting items worn or carried - 5e just made it a blanket rule.
5E is very much about doing your own thing - so a house rule could easily change that. I mean if the opponent was covered in oil, and someone shot out a firebolt at them, I cannot see a DM ruling against that. But then again there is all types out there. 



> In different threads I've recently seen several references to 1e's saving throw matrices, none of them complimentary; and for the life of me I can't understand why.  They're one of 1e's better mechanics.




Within the 5E  DMG, objects have been given an AC with hit point categories based on size of the object and toughness (fragile, resilient).

Along with that the 5E DMG discusses objects and damage types (immunities, resistances, vulnerabilities, damage thresholds). These idea is that it is mostly left up to the DM to adjudicate.


----------



## Jay Verkuilen

Tony Vargas said:


> Complete agreement, here.  I used extensive variants for 1e, and at least some in 3e (though 3e had it's own challenges, due to the overwhelming complexity of the later system, and the sense of 'player entitlement' that enshrined RAW and dismissed house rules out of hand), while 4e, like you, I stuck to making/modding monsters and magic items.  The main reason was that there was little impetuse to use-rule, add or mod anything on the player side, it was all prettymuch balanced/playable, and whatever a player wanted could probably be built 'off the shelf,' with a little re-skinning (players explicitly being allowed to re-skin everything on a power but it's keywords, for instance), so no DM intervention was required there.  That and elaborating on Skill Challenges, of course.



Those aren't the only reasons to work with the game, though. I tended to find "RAW rules only!" to be much more common with 4E than 3E but of course maybe that was the folks I played with, though a lot of them I'd played with before.  Lots of times I like tweaking to avail myself of a different feel as DM, often to shift something fairly substantially. I felt pretty much locked out of doing that in 4E. 



> 5e got me back into the swing of running in an improvisational style, which I hadn't realized how much I'd missed after, really, giving up on DMing with 3.5, because it was just too much work, and 'phoning it in' with 4e, because it was, at the opposite extreme, almost /too/ easy.  Heck, when I run 4e, now, I tend to run it more improv, and little prep, in spite of how easy the prep is, just because I can squeeze out that little extra bit of fun that way.



Yes, 5E felt much more inviting towards me making decisions as DM. I'm not claiming 5E is perfect. There are several things I don't like about it, but I'm probably one of those people who pretty much never likes RAW. (I teach and one thing I always tell students is that "Fair warning: I seem to come to hate every textbook ever written".) Given the Lawful Neutral DM Proofing that went on in 4E I just felt that I really _couldn't_ ever do anything besides make up a few monsters and magic items.


> And I said, no, not even "in function."  Consider the actual function of a caster in the classic game.   I'd "rather" characterize encounter & daily powers as limited-user abilities, rather than spells, because that's what they, in fact, were.



IMO that's a distinction without a difference. They're fire and forget abilities. I totally get that the other part of Vancian casting, namely spell preparation, wasn't part of what they're doing and I understand the difference of role in the party. "In function" meant for me "dailies" which worked like 1E fire and forget spells, something nobody but spellcasters ever really had before. 


> And, it's not a post-hoc rationalization. In genre, a hero will pull some cunning trick, make some heroic effort, invoke some magical power, or whatever - maybe once, at the climax of the story, maybe once before that as foreshadowing, maybe several times to establish his bonnefides as a mighty warrior, mage, or whatever - what he won't do is button-mash his best trick against every enemy, every time.  There are many possible ways to model that in an RPG, and Vancian 'memorization' is perhaps among the very worst, but D&D went with it (and has been backing away from it ever since!), a combination of routine 'at wills,' establishing short-rest-recharge 'encoutners,' and dramatic 'dailies,' is arguably not among the worst.



I could certainly think of worse in terms of sheer burden (e.g., _Exalted 2nd Edition_) but I won't claim I liked At Wills/Encounters/Dailies once the bloom left the rose. Note: Opinion.  The post hoc rationalization was the notion of "choosing when you're awesome" which is exactly what you described. As I said, IMO, it's pretty bleh, though I guess I'll tolerate it to some degree in the form of Action Surge in 5E... so I won't claim to be 100% consistent in my preferences. I don't like things that feel like cards in a CCG, which is exactly what Dailies felt like to me and they were all over the place in 4E. So ultimately it was the ubiquity of Daily powers and general sameness of the action structure for all classes that really bugged me, at least when it came to characters---the magic item system and utter lack of an economy was another issue; 5E hasn't really fixed that. 4E was really solidly built on the gamist and more narrative sides of things, but IMO pretty much just ignored the simulate/world building/secondary reality type feel that I rather like. 


> It's pretty darn abstract, compared to creating separate sub-systems that, say, let a fencing master 'create openings' or condition opponents to pull off a finsihing move at one point in a given duel, or to let a mage 'gather power' while deflecting/absorbing an impetuous enemy's flashy attacks until he has enough to pull off some great working of arcane might, or let a devout knight stand against the brutal onslaught of a superhuman monster only to have his faith and perserverence rewarded with miraculous victory at the end.  But, abstraction is a price worth paying for playabilty, in a game, IMHO. All editions of D&D do pay that same price, some just get better deals for it than others... Spin it all you want, what you just said was that 4e was a better game than 3e.



Right, this is exactly what I mean by "choosing when to be awesome" as a post hoc rationalization for the daily power. I agree they mirror genre, but only in a rude gamist sort of way. We'll have to agree to disagree---I don't think I'll ever get to the point of _liking_ daily powers, especially for martial characters. I don't recall saying 4E was a badly designed game. Not liking the choices that were made isn't the same as not respecting that the choices were thought through for the most part. For example, I'm not one of those people who thinks that a musician or artist who works in a genre I don't like sucks. Quite often doing the things they do requires a lot of skill. There are a lot of things I did like about 4E, but many other choices they made I really didn't care for and felt very blocked as a DM to change them. Ultimately, what's a good deal is in the eye of the beholder. 


> Those are both pretty minor, really. ... Frankly, if an optimizer - whether abusing a Tier 1 caster or an outre build - is slow, it's his own darn fault.  ;P




Long turns hurt everyone, not just the person taking the long turn. The burden of adding a bunch of damage dice was darn slow. I'd see people just _grind_ doing that and rarely could seem to get them to do the things that would get them to speed up. Clearly it was a failure of basic arithmetic skills, but that made it no less real. This was something that 4E was actually pretty good about in many ways. 



> Sustain was the 4e equivalent of concentration, and did require an action - often a minor action, sometimes even standard.




Yep, and actually I rather like that as opposed to the way it works now. Losing your reaction, in particular, would be a nice tactical choice to have to make if you're concentrating.  







> Some builds could go that way, if you wanted to take them there.  But, as with minor action attacks, it's not like a given concept forced you to play that given way.



Not that I was forced... the fact that other people would take them was a problem, IME often the people who _really shouldn't_ take them. They just slowed things down A TON. This happened in 3E, too and can happen in 5E as well. 



> "some of the fantasy/action genre cadence of combat" - in genre, especially on the more pop-culture/action-movie side of the genre, it's very common for battles to go badly against the heroes, at first, then for them to come back and win. Cliche, prettymuch. If you're tired of that cliche, and like the idea of heroes beating down the baddies swiftly & decisively, most of the time (while still giving a sense that the baddies are deadly), you can cut monster hps & increase their damage proportionately (like I said, half/double was oft-suggested).  It can be a delicate adjustment, since the other side of 'most of the time,' can end up TPK.




Yep, that's a risk I'm willing to take but I find myself skilled enough as a DM to be able to keep encounters tough without TPKing. Quite honestly I can't recall the last time I had one. Of course, I could and did do things like you describe and indeed tend to do exactly that in most games I run. Fortunately for me, I can 99.44% Ivory Soap pure claim I will never play or run 4E again. 



> It's more of the above, really, capturing the way combats actually go in genre (heroic, dramatic, come-from-behind, &c) vs how they go 'realistically' (nasty, short, & one-sided). As I tried to explain above, they're just moored to something else:  to genre conventions, rather than D&D traditions (or worse yet, "realism").  And, yeah, he seems to have a flair for good mechanics like that - both functional as part of a game and evocative of the genre.



I don't mind genre feel of reversals, but rarely felt 4E combats actually achieved that---most of the time they were more like playing a CRPG on a laggy system, although the system ran better at lower levels. Given the propensity for lose a turn type abilities that were a big part of the whole genre reversals combined with long turns, there were times when I just felt I was waiting for an hour for my turn to come around again. Getting to roll a save to escape stun lock was like having someone give me one M&M... gee thanks.


----------



## Jhaelen

Jay Verkuilen said:


> Yeah, 4E in particular had the heavy hand of the game designer. It had a very Lawful Neutral design philosophy IMO. I feel much more able to tweak or alter both 3E and 5E, but the intricacies and degree of pre-definition of 4E made me really reticent to do much of anything except make up a few monsters and items. Even then I felt that was quite difficult to do in a way I never felt in prior versions of the game. I really didn't feel much license to do so, either, like it really wasn't something the designers _invited_ me to do. Yes there are spots they said "make this your own" but I never felt they actually meant it, kind of like an IT department that says "we're here to help you do your job" but you know based on all the restrictions they put on your computer that they don't actually mean it.



Actually, that's precisely the feeling that 3e gave me: A big part of this was that monsters and NPCs used the same rules as the PCs. Players suddenly wanted to know how and why a monster was able to do something. Everything was questioned and needed to be 'according to RAW'. In fact, I think, it was during 3e that I first encountered that acronym.

In contrast 4e had some highly polished rules and a very transparent design. The math was laid bare and for that reason it was easy to see how changing one aspect of the system would affect other parts. E.g. it didn't take me long to figure out that monsters needed a math fix. Others realized the same about the skill system: The DCs were off. But all in all, 4e was the system that needed the least amount if tinkering, imho. It was probably the first edition of D&D that worked well for me without using any house-rules.
By comparison, when we started playing Pathfinder we implemented three house rules right in the first session!

I also feel that 4e gave the DM an unprecedented level of freedom in other, less rule-related areas. Tweaking encounter design, healing rates, skill challenges and rate of advancement was very much possible and encouraged. With the release of the Dark Sun campaign setting even more tools became available: backgrounds, inherent bonuses to do away with must-have magic items, skill powers, rituals, etc.

It's possible that 5e is even more open in that regard, but I don't know that edition well enough to be sure.


----------



## Lanefan

Jhaelen said:


> Actually, that's precisely the feeling that 3e gave me: A big part of this was that monsters and NPCs used the same rules as the PCs. Players suddenly wanted to know how and why a monster was able to do something. Everything was questioned and needed to be 'according to RAW'. In fact, I think, it was during 3e that I first encountered that acronym.



I found that with 3e as well, though I see a different source for the problem: PCs and NPCs and monsters all using the same rules is just fine.  The problem is that the rules for monster design shouldn't be player-facing - the players have no business knowing what makes a monster tick under its hood.

IMO 3e made far too many rules player-facing, and 4e only made this worse.  5e seems to have backed off on it a bit, but not enough.



> I also feel that 4e gave the DM an unprecedented level of freedom in other, less rule-related areas. Tweaking encounter design, healing rates, skill challenges and rate of advancement was very much possible and encouraged.



Most certainly not unprecedented.  All of these things (except skill challenges, of course, as they didn't exist) and many others could be tweaked, kitbashed, or even redesigned from the ground up in 1e; while still leaving the game playable and often making it more so.

How do I know this?  Because I've been doing just this to 1e for 'bout 35 years.  It's a stunningly resilient system, in the main.

Lanefan


----------



## Jay Verkuilen

Jhaelen said:


> Actually, that's precisely the feeling that 3e gave me: A big part of this was that monsters and NPCs used the same rules as the PCs. Players suddenly wanted to know how and why a monster was able to do something. Everything was questioned and needed to be 'according to RAW'. In fact, I think, it was during 3e that I first encountered that acronym.




I know people who had that experience in 3E regarding exactly the point you made, monster design. 




> In contrast 4e had some highly polished rules and a very transparent design. The math was laid bare and for that reason it was easy to see how changing one aspect of the system would affect other parts. E.g. it didn't take me long to figure out that monsters needed a math fix. Others realized the same about the skill system: The DCs were off. But all in all, 4e was the system that needed the least amount if tinkering, imho. <snip> I also feel that 4e gave the DM an unprecedented level of freedom in other, less rule-related areas. Tweaking encounter design, healing rates, skill challenges and rate of advancement was very much possible and encouraged. With the release of the Dark Sun campaign setting even more tools became available: backgrounds, inherent bonuses to do away with must-have magic items, skill powers, rituals, etc.




I can see your point but I really felt the opposite. Interesting how different people's experiences can be. I suspect a lot had to do with how happy with the underlying AW/E/D structure and general premises of 4E one was. At that point I can see it being very freeing feeling that the underlying stats and system was solid, but I always really chafed at it. While there were things I thought 4E did very well, I _really_ disliked things like milestones, magic item daily powers, and Daily powers for martial characters. Obviously you and folks like Tony Vargas' mileage differed.


----------



## Tony Vargas

Jay Verkuilen said:


> Those aren't the only reasons to work with the game, though. I tended to find "RAW rules only!" to be much more common with 4E than 3E



 I found it ubiquitous and insistent with 3e, though the DM's defense was "Core Only!"  With 4e it was mostly a non-issue, but that's because I ran 4e for a much larger proportion of new & casual players who weren't invested in the system being a certain way.  



> Yes, 5E felt much more inviting towards me making decisions as DM. I'm not claiming 5E is perfect. There are several things I don't like about it, but I'm probably one of those people who pretty much never likes RAW.  Given the Lawful Neutral DM Proofing that went on in 4E I just felt that I really _couldn't_ ever do anything besides make up a few monsters and magic items.



 Nothing stops you from kitbashing any edition, but I find some things discouraging.  For instance, in 3.5, the game was pretty well broken, so if I tinkered a bit, I was unlikely to break it worse, possibly make it better - but no 3.5 player was going to accept the 'better' version, because their build was for the standard version, so good luck /running/ that.  ;(   In 4e, the design was so transparent and balanced you could "see the strings" so if I went to tweek something I'd see, oh, this is going to screw up this, that, and the other.. oh, never mind. 

But, in 5e, the game really does invite you to just do stuff.  Every time a player declares an action, the game is like "uh, boss, whadda we do?  Is the outcome uncertain?"  You get used to that, to making rulings instead of always just following a rule algorithm (however good or awful), and your /players/ get used to it, so when you want to do something different, you just do, and they hardly notice, let alone complain.  MM calls it Empowerment.  We could as well call it "D&D."



> They're fire and forget abilities.I totally get that the other part of Vancian casting, namely spell preparation, wasn't part of what they're doing and I understand the difference of role in the party. "In function" meant for me "dailies" which worked like 1E fire and forget spells, something nobody but spellcasters ever really had before.



 "Fire & Forget" also references the old Vancian /Memorization/ mechanic.  The classic game used n/day (often 3/day, for some reason), pervasively, for special abilities, for items, for terrain features, for oddball situational checks, it was really pretty arbitrary that way.  3e, did, in fact, give out 1/day stuff that wasn't spell casting, nor even supernatural.  The rogue's defensive roll was 1/day.  The Monk got Stunning Fist 1/day/level, and a Fighter that took Stunning Fist - it was a Fighter Bonus Feat, so virtually a class feature - got it 1/day.  None of those had the (SU) tag.



> The post hoc rationalization was the notion of "choosing when you're awesome" which is exactly what you described. As I said, IMO, it's pretty bleh, though I guess I'll tolerate it to some degree in the form of Action Surge in 5E... so I won't claim to be 100% consistent in my preferences. Right, this is exactly what I mean by "choosing when to be awesome" as a post hoc rationalization for the daily power. I agree they mirror genre, but only in a rude gamist sort of way. We'll have to agree to disagree---I don't think I'll ever get to the point of _liking_ daily powers, especially for martial characters.



 Except, not post-hoc, if I understand how you're using the term, more ground-up.  The intent of the design was to let everyone be awesome, you can't be awesome all the time, so... gamist contruct: 1/day.  And I don't see how 'gamist' is bad, in itself - it's just a Forge epiphet for remembering, 'oh, yeah, we're designing a game, maybe we should try to make it not suck,' which has never gone over well in the sense of moving books.  The adoption of Vanican was done for playability, it was, itself, a gamist construct, and one entirely at odd with genre.  It's only tollerated because of long familiarity - and the excessive advantages of playing a Tier 1 Vancian caster, of course.



> ---the magic item system and utter lack of an economy was another issue; 5E hasn't really fixed that.



 5e's fixed magic items in a precipitous way:  by largely eliminating them from the calculus of the game's design.  They're back to being wildcards the DM can throw in to mix things up if he wants.  In a sense it's also fixed the economy, since gold no longer smoothly/fungibly translates into power through the codified make/buy of 3.x/4e.  The economy is now whatever it is in your setting, that could be hard-luck 11th level mercenaries fighting for a handful of silver and a week's rations, or 1st level nobles with retinues setting up a pavilion for them every night.  



> I don't recall saying 4E was a badly designed game. Not liking the choices that were made isn't the same as not respecting that the choices were thought through for the most part.



 Really, a lot of what you've been saying has just been very inside-out ways of saying it was a very well-designed game, indeed.   



> Long turns hurt everyone, not just the person taking the long turn. The burden of adding a bunch of damage dice was darn slow. I'd see people just _grind_ doing that and rarely could seem to get them to do the things that would get them to speed up. Clearly it was a failure of basic arithmetic skills, but that made it no less real. This was something that 4E was actually pretty good about in many ways.



 Nod.  What I mean by "his own fault" was not 'he should suffer for it' (because, as you point out, everyone else is, too), but that he should try to improve.  What 4e did that made rounds and combats seem to take so much longer was to move decisions into combat, from pre-combat strategizing, and to give everyone more 'agency' in that combat.  Instead of some players taking seconds on their turn, and one 15 minutes (and one or two bending the DM's ear for an hour before combat even began), you have everyone getting their turns done in a minute or few.  The guy used to taking 15 minute turns feels cheated, and everyone notices it takes longer for their turn to come up, and the combat goes more rounds, too, because the combats are bigger & more involved, and can't be ended by a Nova.



> Yep, and actually I rather like that as opposed to the way it works now. Losing your reaction, in particular, would be a nice tactical choice to have to make if you're concentrating.  Not that I was forced... the fact that other people would take them was a problem, IME often the people who _really shouldn't_ take them. They just slowed things down A TON. This happened in 3E, too and can happen in 5E as well.



 Nod.  There's a lot of customization in 3e, as there was in 4e, and that should let players take a character concept they want to play, and tailor it to play well with their style.  But, some folks just don't realize what they're good at... 



> I don't mind genre feel of reversals, but rarely felt 4E combats actually achieved that-



 It was a little on-the-nose, with it, really.  I mean, you could try to 'abuse' 4e the way you might have 3e or 1e, and set up a 'Nova' with the intent of winning a combat in round 1.  But monsters were tough, had big bad tricks of their own, and might get meaner when bloodied, so it often backfired:  you'd burn down a standard monster or bloody a solo, and then the monster hits you with its best stuff, you're hosed, and it's whittling eachother down with at-wills for the rest of the combat (of course, depending on the monsters and the tactics, it could also work).  If you were more circumspect the first round, saw how the monster worked, and deployed a good set of tactics against it, you'd get beaten pretty hard, at first, need a Second Wind or help from a Leader, but pull out the victory in the end.  
The 'tactics' side of 4e were compartively deep, but only compared to D&D, which has tended for a long time, to be dominated by a more 'right spell for the job' rock/paper/scissors/lizard/Spock kind of dynamic.  You pull out fire for the troll, you don't hit the shambling mound with lightning, you cast move earth on the clay golem, take a mace to the skeletons, etc, etc, etc...
...it builds up 'player skill' and creates an impression of a world where these things are facts of life.  You half expect there to be idioms like "you look like a troll in a burning house' or 'who put the potion of super-heroism in your gruel?'



> , although the system ran better at lower levels. Given the propensity for lose a turn type abilities that were a big part of the whole genre reversals combined with long turns, there were times when I just felt I was waiting for an hour for my turn to come around again. Getting to roll a save to escape stun lock was like having someone give me one M&M... gee thanks.



 Monsters that stunned you for any length of time were quite rare at heroic (daze or slow or imobilize, OTOH, all over the place), but sure, it's bad to sit out part of a fight because you keep failing your save every round. It's probably about the worst way you could handle such things in D&D - except for all the others.  It's not as bad as missing one saving throw, up-front, and sitting out the whole fight (or dropping dead instantly), for instance, or, for that matter, just having no option that can make an impact the whole time.


----------



## Jay Verkuilen

Tony Vargas said:


> I found it ubiquitous and insistent with 3e, though the DM's defense was "Core Only!"  With 4e it was mostly a non-issue, but that's because I ran 4e for a much larger proportion of new & casual players who weren't invested in the system being a certain way.




I got much less BS hacking 3.5; nobody would tolerate it in 4 and I felt it was largely impossible. 





> "Fire & Forget" also references the old Vancian /Memorization/ mechanic.  The classic game used n/day (often 3/day, for some reason), pervasively, for special abilities, for items, for terrain features, for oddball situational checks, it was really pretty arbitrary that way.  3e, did, in fact, give out 1/day stuff that wasn't spell casting, nor even supernatural.  The rogue's defensive roll was 1/day.  The Monk got Stunning Fist 1/day/level, and a Fighter that took Stunning Fist - it was a Fighter Bonus Feat, so virtually a class feature - got it 1/day.  None of those had the (SU) tag.




True, but they weren't really core things that identified the character. And monks to me always felt more supernatural. But I don't think there's anywhere else to go with this. Suffice it to say that in general, I'm not a fan of daily powers if there's another way that's not super painful to make being cool limited so that people don't just button mash it. For instance, make the cool fighter thing situational. 




> Except, not post-hoc, if I understand how you're using the term, more ground-up.




Rationalizations are almost always post-hoc. That is, the thing has been decided, in this case to fit the general turn structure and play logic, and the reason is made up afterwards. The reason's not even in the rulebook, those were things I heard people say and probably said myself, too. 




> The intent of the design was to let everyone be awesome, you can't be awesome all the time, so... gamist contruct: 1/day.  And I don't see how 'gamist' is bad, in itself - it's just a Forge epiphet for remembering, 'oh, yeah, we're designing a game, maybe we should try to make it not suck,' which has never gone over well in the sense of moving books.  The adoption of Vanican was done for playability, it was, itself, a gamist construct, and one entirely at odd with genre.  It's only tollerated because of long familiarity - and the excessive advantages of playing a Tier 1 Vancian caster, of course.




The adoption of Vancian magic was done in no small part because EGG was a Jack Vance nut!

To me a highly gamist structure is one that doesn't have an in-world rationale. To some degree those are inevitable, of course, but a highly gamist game like 4E is one where "getting the rules to work and ensuring game balance above all else" is the primary driving concern. 



> Really, a lot of what you've been saying has just been very inside-out ways of saying it <4E> was a very well-designed game, indeed.




It _was_ well-designed but not IMO good for what I wanted. That is to say, many of the choices they made were well-thought out choices I felt boxed me in. They zigged hard where I would have liked to have the option to zag. Without going through a lot of pain and just as often fight with players, I didn't think I could actually do any of those changes. I've DMed for 30 years and can categorically say I disliked DMing 4E the most by far given how in the way I felt it was for me. I recognize that other folks felt that it was very liberating due to the inherent balance of it (for the most part). 

This wouldn't really matter if there was a way to play other games, but at the time it was all nearly anyone I knew wanted to play. 




> Nod.  What I mean by "his own fault" was not 'he should suffer for it' (because, as you point out, everyone else is, too), but that he should try to improve.  What 4e did that made rounds and combats seem to take so much longer was to move decisions into combat, from pre-combat strategizing, and to give everyone more 'agency' in that combat.  Instead of some players taking seconds on their turn, and one 15 minutes (and one or two bending the DM's ear for an hour before combat even began), you have everyone getting their turns done in a minute or few.  The guy used to taking 15 minute turns feels cheated, and everyone notices it takes longer for their turn to come up, and the combat goes more rounds, too, because the combats are bigger & more involved, and can't be ended by a Nova.




That's not how I tended to see it happen. The constant decision loop---I recognize you dislike this comparison but I really felt every round was like looking through a card hand trying to figure out which card to play, and _please_ don't try to tell me that's _not what it felt like to me_---meant every player had to decide what to do. Some were really, really slow at it or obsessed with setting up the optimal combo (which just as often failed or got busted by someone else). 




> It was a little on-the-nose, with it, really.  I mean, you could try to 'abuse' 4e the way you might have 3e or 1e, and set up a 'Nova' with the intent of winning a combat in round 1.  But monsters were tough, had big bad tricks of their own, and might get meaner when bloodied, so it often backfired:  you'd burn down a standard monster or bloody a solo, and then the monster hits you with its best stuff, you're hosed, and it's whittling eachother down with at-wills for the rest of the combat (of course, depending on the monsters and the tactics, it could also work).  If you were more circumspect the first round, saw how the monster worked, and deployed a good set of tactics against it, you'd get beaten pretty hard, at first, need a Second Wind or help from a Leader, but pull out the victory in the end.




I didn't see all the abuses of 3E that others are talking about but of course we all see a small, narrow window of the folks we play with and in general I played with people who were good enough DMs to avoid that. I didn't need WotC to help me out by making combat DM proofed into a particular genre cliche. 




> Monsters that stunned you for any length of time were quite rare at heroic (daze or slow or imobilize, OTOH, all over the place), but sure, it's bad to sit out part of a fight because you keep failing your save every round. It's probably about the worst way you could handle such things in D&D - except for all the others.  It's not as bad as missing one saving throw, up-front, and sitting out the whole fight (or dropping dead instantly), for instance, or, for that matter, just having no option that can make an impact the whole time.




I agree that they did let you out of stun jail which was different than, say, prior editions where it was very hard to get out at all. Usually I replaced any "save or die" with damage to allow some chance of survival. Stuns weren't bad if they weren't combined with long turns. IME 4E had both long turns and stuns. Daze was also nasty, though better. There were characters that were essentially devastated by that, whereas others were much less bothered. Of course, that's a weakness of that particular class type, but it fed on long turns because the long turn classes (e.g., barbarians and avengers) were precisely the ones that could substantially ignore dazing. 

Near the end of 4E, were I to run it again, I said to myself I'd outright ban barbarians and avengers just due to their turn length, and in retrospect would probably ban any pre-Essentials character just for good measure. Of course, I have no intention of ever playing or running it again so that's not an issue. 

All that said, they did have some good ideas!


----------



## Tony Vargas

Jay Verkuilen said:


> I got much less BS hacking 3.5; nobody would tolerate it in 4 and I felt it was largely impossible.



 Mildly different impressions, then.  I'm sure we can agree that 5e & it's community is /far/ more amenable to DM 'hacking'/modding/variants/house-rules/fiat/etc than any prior WotC ed.



> True, but they weren't really core things that identified the character. And monks to me always felt more supernatural.



 Bits of them doubtless did, but FWIW, 3.x declined to tag Stunning Fist as such, no (SU) - maybe because they /did/ make it a fighter bonus feat.  So we can't say D&D has never dropped the 'daily' on a non-caster ability.   It's a matter of scale & effect.  A fighter taking Stunning Fist wasn't suddenly the equal of a mage.



> I'm not a fan of daily powers if there's another way that's not super painful to make being cool limited so that people don't just button mash it. For instance, make the cool fighter thing situational.



 I can't say I was ever a big fan of n/day limitations, myself, even, or especialy, in the form of Vancian magic.  Early on, I did appreciate it, however ironically, on what I guess today would be a 'gamist' level - there was a challenge to picking the right spells and using them at the right time.  That challenge diminshed rapidly in later eds, when you could make/buy bushels of scrolls, or cast spontaneously, or, now in 5e, prep spells /and/ cast them spontaneously (if the 3.5 Wizard could've done that, it'd've cracked the mythical Tier 0). 

It's as much or more the 'except for magic' than the 'daily sux' part that I disagree with on a philsophical level, I guess.  



> Rationalizations are almost always post-hoc. That is, the thing has been decided, in this case to fit the general turn structure and play logic, and the reason is made up afterwards. The reason's not even in the rulebook, those were things I heard people say and probably said myself, too.



 Ok, it was not a post-hoc rationalization, but a design goal, how 'bout that?   
Seriously, though, the idea of 'choose when to be awesome' is implicit in a limited use/higher-power ability.   Casters had been doing it for decades, so nobody cared, but the fighter gets to do it?  _Casus Belli_ for an edition war.  

I think that just cycles back around to familiarity and expectations.  Even those of us who don't care for n/day limitations (which, ironically, is both of us), got used to Vanican. 



> The adoption of Vancian magic was done in no small part because EGG was a Jack Vance nut!



 Not the worst reason.  Vance was one of the greats of Science Fiction, The Dying Earth was actually very inflluencial in the genre, MZB's Darkover, and Wolfe's Urth both owe a huge debt to Dying Earth...  of course, neither of them used Vancian /magic/.  



> To me a highly gamist structure is one that doesn't have an in-world rationale. To some degree those are inevitable, of course, but a highly gamist game like 4E is one where "getting the rules to work and ensuring game balance above all else" is the primary driving concern.



 Not a valid definition, IMHO.  You're defining a goal: game that works, essentially, by what you fear it will have to give up to get there, rather than by what it will have to do to get there. 
For instance, right in the old DMG, EGG said that the 'relatively short spoken spell' of Vance's Dying Earth was chosen to make the magic-user playable as a PC, as opposed to the long rituals & elaborate materials that were more typical of magickal traditions & folklore.  It was a gamist reason.  Yet, now, it's enshrined as an 'in-world rationale' (that, I guess, is a post-hoc rationalization).  And, remember, the Vancian 'memorization' has long since been dropped in favor of another post-hoc rationalization, 'preparation.'  

We see that a lot with discussions of complexity, too.  You'll see folks going "the game needed a simple fighter for old-school fans, the game needs a complex fighter for those who liked the 4e version."  No, the virtue of the 4e fighter was never that it was complex (it really /wasn't/ in the more complex half of a continuum of all D&D classes ever, because, well, casters), it's that it was part of a balanced game.  The 3.5 fighter, was more complex to build, but simpler to run than the 2e fighter, it was a better, more elegant, more customizeable design, but the 2e fighter buzzed out huge DPR with multiple attacks & specialization, a broken design in a broken system can be good.  A good design in a broken system can be pathetic.




> It _was_ well-designed but not IMO good for what I wanted. That is to say, many of the choices they made were well-thought out choices I felt boxed me in. They zigged hard where I would have liked to have the option to zag. Without going through a lot of pain and just as often fight with players, I didn't think I could actually do any of those changes. I've DMed for 30 years and can categorically say I disliked DMing 4E the most by far given how in the way I felt it was for me. I recognize that other folks felt that it was very liberating due to the inherent balance of it (for the most part).



 Liberating is not the word I'd use:  Easy.  DMing 4e was just straight-up easy.  I saw brand-new players transition from playing to running in a fraction of the time it had seemed to take in prior eds.



> This wouldn't really matter if there was a way to play other games, but at the time it was all nearly anyone I knew wanted to play.



 One reason for the vehemence of the edition war, I think, is the dominant position of D&D.  It's easier to find a current-ed D&D game than anything else, by, like orders of magnitude.  I could play 5e four nights a week around here, no problem.  If you want to play Night's Dark Agents, you'll have to know somebody who knows somebody who might be able to get you in next year...



> That's not how I tended to see it happen. The constant decision loop meant every player had to decide what to do.



 Yep, I know it sounds crazy, but in a game where the primary activity of the player is making decisions for his charcter, a well-balanced game will give every player similar opportunities to make decisions...


> Some were really, really slow at it or obsessed with setting up the optimal combo (which just as often failed or got busted by someone else).



...and some players are just annoying.  ;|



> I didn't see all the abuses of 3E that others are talking about but of course we all see a small, narrow window of the folks we play with and in general I played with people who were good enough DMs to avoid that. I didn't need WotC to help me out by making combat DM proofed into a particular genre cliche.



 I missed the transition from problem players to DM-proofing.  Balance /does/ help with certain types of player problems, and it makes the DM's job easier, rather than making the game immune from him doing his job.



> I agree that they did let you out of stun jail which was different than, say, prior editions where it was very hard to get out at all. Usually I replaced any "save or die" with damage to allow some chance of survival. Stuns weren't bad if they weren't combined with long turns.



 It seems like Stun (save ends) with long turns is still better than held or paralyzed or whatever for 1min/caster level or 3d6 10-min 1e 'turns' or, yeah, now that you mention it, _dead_.    



> Daze was also nasty, though better. There were characters that were essentially devastated by that, whereas others were much less bothered. Of course, that's a weakness of that particular class type, but it fed on long turns because the long turn classes (e.g., barbarians and avengers) were precisely the ones that could substantially ignore dazing.



 I can't say I've seen barbarians & avengers taking excessively long turns - often, it's a particular player, regardless of what they play.  I guess it's what those players were playing in your group at the time?


----------



## pemerton

Lanefan said:


> That's on them for letting rules trump common sense and reality.





Tony Vargas said:


> To be fair (a) don't 5e fire spells usually mention they can start fires (typically they did in the classic game) and (b) 5e's all about Rulings Not Rules, so if you're not ruling whether a fire spell (or lightning spell, for that matter) sets something on fire, you're just "not doin' it right."



Here are two links to relevant posts/threads. It's about post 100 onwards in the second of those that you can see eg people saying that it would be a house rule for a Burning Hands spell to have a chance of setting fire to a scroll that an enemy wizard is holding.

But in any event, if it's a "facepalm" moment or "not doing it right" in 5e to ajudicate fireball in that fashion, it must follow that all those during the 4e era who attacked that edition because (eg) its fireballs don't set things alight (depsite haveing the _fire_ keyword, which - per the PHB p 55 - indicates "[e]xplosive bursts, fiery rays, or simple ignition") were wrong too.


----------



## pemerton

Jay Verkuilen said:


> 4E in particular had the heavy hand of the game designer.





			
				pemerton said:
			
		

> The 4e description of the Fireball spell is very close to the Moldvay Basic one.





Sadras said:


> Your point? It was called Basic for a reason the book had a page limit.



My point is that I don't think it can be true both that "4e had the heavy hand of the game designer" and "the description of the Fireball spell is very close to the Moldvay basic one." The latter is true; hence the former, it seems to me, must be false.

Another way to put it: I don't think the hand of the game designer becomes "heavier" because insstead of describing fireball as a _20' R burst of fire that does damage to creatures within it_, the game describes it as an _Area burst 3 that targets creatures_.



Jay Verkuilen said:


> I tended to ignore a lot of the "fireball physics" parts except to note that fireball _didn't_ generate blast effects, filled space, and would often require an item saving throw to determine if it got fried. I'm sure the gold melting part was due to the fact that "treasure = XP" in 1E. But yeah, a number of spells in 1E had excess detail whereas there were others that lacked clear detail.



To me, this makes the contrast in terms of the "heavy hand of the game designer" harder to follow.



Jay Verkuilen said:


> Not quite sure what you mean by karaoke, though.



The _result _of someone else's play experience - eg a ruling that Gygax or some other earlier GM made while playing the game - is being presented as _input_ for someone else's play. So instead of playing your own game like Gygax et al did, the rulebook invites you to sing along with thepoay they already engaged in.



Lanefan said:


> giving some guidelines, as 1e does, is never a bad thing.



Here's the text of the AD&D fireball spell; I've bolded the bits that olveraps with 4e and Basic D&D:

*A fireball is an explosive burst of flame, which* detonates with a low roar, and delivers damage proportionate to the level of the magic-user who cast it, i.e. 1 six-sided die (d6) for each level of experience of the spell caster.[/b] _Exception:_ Magic fireball wands deliver 6 die fireballs (6d6), magic staves with this capability deliver 8 die fireballs, and scroll spells of this type deliver a fireball of from 5 to 10 dice (d6 + 4) of damage. The burst of the _fireball_ does not expend a considerable amount of pressure, and the burst will generally conform to the shape of the area in which it occurs, thus covering an area equal to its normal spherical volume. [The area which is covered by the _fireball_ is a total volume of roughly 33,000 cubic feet (or yards)]. Besides causing damage to creatures, the _fireball_ ignites all combustible materials within its burst radius, and the heat of the _fireball_will melt soft metals such as gold, copper, silver, etc. Items exposed to the spell's effects must be rolled for to determine if they are affected. Items with a creature which makes its saving throw are considered as unaffected. The magic-user points his or her finger and speaks the range (distance and height) at which the fireball is to burst. A streak flashes from the pointing digit and, unless it impacts upon a material body prior to attaining the prescribed range, flowers into the _fireball_. *If creatures fail their saving throws, they all take full hit point damage frqm the blast. Those who make saving throws manage to dodge, fall flat or roll aside, taking 1/2 the full hit point damage - each and every one within the blast area.* The material component of this spell is a tiny ball composed of bat guano and sulphur.​
There's a lot of text there that, in my view, manifests the "heavy hand of the game designer". What does it add to the game to have a rule that the fireball detonates with a low roar? What causes the roar if there's no pressure? Why does this spell have its verbal and somatic components specified, when very few others do?

I don't see how 4e can in any way be conisdefred more presecriptive than that.


----------



## Tony Vargas

pemerton said:


> I don't think the hand of the game designer becomes "heavier" because insstead of describing fireball as a _20' R burst of fire that does damage to creatures within it_, the game describes it as an _Area burst 3 that targets creatures_.



 Jay & I touched on this.  In a new edition of a game in which the fireball had always had a 20' radius and long, prescriptive, description of how it's cast, looks & sounds, then all those elements are already acustomed, so only what changes can set off dicordant bells.  So simplifying and condensing 8 column-inches down to 1 or 2, and leaving many of those elements of appearance/sound/etc up to the player, beause it's so different, is liable to be held to a much higher standard, because the whole thing is parsed as an unknown, a 'threat' of sorts, even.



> There's a lot of text there that, in my view, manifests the "heavy hand of the game designer". What does it add to the game to have a rule that the fireball detonates with a low roar? What causes the roar if there's no pressure? Why does this spell have its verbal and somatic components specified, when very few others do?
> 
> I don't see how 4e can in any way be conisdefred more presecriptive than that.



 I think 'heavy hand of the designer' may also be another angle on the "seeing the wires" dysphoria people experienced.   

Remember the post a while back about Mike Mearls playing 1e with Luke Gygax?  The sense of mystery and foreboding from the system being as dark and murky, as treacherous and menacing, as the dungeon, itself?  

It's like, /not/ that.


----------



## Jay Verkuilen

pemerton said:


> My point is that I don't think it can be true both that "4e had the heavy hand of the game designer" and "the description of the Fireball spell is very close to the Moldvay basic one." The latter is true; hence the former, it seems to me, must be false.




I think you're cherry picking my quotes and making a false dichotomy. 1E fireball is one example of a clearly often problematic spell hence it got a ton of rulings. 4E had a very heavy hand of the designer all over the place. Clearly some people really liked it and others didn't, but the whole fact that 4E is a pretty radical redesign of what had been a fairly static system in many respects for a long time. 

As to _fireball_ in Moldvay Basic... wait, how is that even in there? Basic only covered levels 1-3. (I don't have a copy of it anymore... long gone.)


----------



## pogre

I played some Theater of the Mind D&D this past week while on vacation at a fishing cabin. We had a great time, but there were several times folks commented they missed the terrain and miniatures. I think it is great D&D is broad-shouldered enough to support both types of play.


----------



## MichaelSomething

So some people just want to play Calvinball?


----------



## Ted Serious

pemerton said:


> My point is that I don't think it can be true both that "4e had the heavy hand of the game designer" and "the description of the Fireball spell is very close to the Moldvay basic one." The latter is true; hence the former, it seems to me, must be false.
> 
> Another way to put it: I don't think the hand of the game designer becomes "heavier" because insstead of describing fireball as a _20' R burst of fire that does damage to creatures within it_, the game describes it as an _Area burst 3 that targets creatures_.
> 
> To me, this makes the contrast in terms of the "heavy hand of the game designer" harder to follow.
> 
> The _result _of someone else's play experience - eg a ruling that Gygax or some other earlier GM made while playing the game - is being presented as _input_ for someone else's play. So instead of playing your own game like Gygax et al did, the rulebook invites you to sing along with thepoay they already engaged in.
> 
> Here's the text of the AD&D fireball spell; I've bolded the bits that olveraps with 4e and Basic D&D:
> 
> *A fireball is an explosive burst of flame, which* detonates with a low roar, and delivers damage proportionate to the level of the magic-user who cast it, i.e. 1 six-sided die (d6) for each level of experience of the spell caster.[/b] _Exception:_ Magic fireball wands deliver 6 die fireballs (6d6), magic staves with this capability deliver 8 die fireballs, and scroll spells of this type deliver a fireball of from 5 to 10 dice (d6 + 4) of damage. The burst of the _fireball_ does not expend a considerable amount of pressure, and the burst will generally conform to the shape of the area in which it occurs, thus covering an area equal to its normal spherical volume. [The area which is covered by the _fireball_ is a total volume of roughly 33,000 cubic feet (or yards)]. Besides causing damage to creatures, the _fireball_ ignites all combustible materials within its burst radius, and the heat of the _fireball_will melt soft metals such as gold, copper, silver, etc. Items exposed to the spell's effects must be rolled for to determine if they are affected. Items with a creature which makes its saving throw are considered as unaffected. The magic-user points his or her finger and speaks the range (distance and height) at which the fireball is to burst. A streak flashes from the pointing digit and, unless it impacts upon a material body prior to attaining the prescribed range, flowers into the _fireball_. *If creatures fail their saving throws, they all take full hit point damage frqm the blast. Those who make saving throws manage to dodge, fall flat or roll aside, taking 1/2 the full hit point damage - each and every one within the blast area.* The material component of this spell is a tiny ball composed of bat guano and sulphur.​
> There's a lot of text there that, in my view, manifests the "heavy hand of the game designer". What does it add to the game to have a rule that the fireball detonates with a low roar? What causes the roar if there's no pressure? Why does this spell have its verbal and somatic components specified, when very few others do?
> 
> I don't see how 4e can in any way be conisdefred more presecriptive than that.




It adds nothing to the game, but it adds to the world in which it is set.  It's a world in which sulphur and bat guano are strategic commodities.  In which fortifications employ vents and baffles to mitigate the spread of fireballs and cloudkills, and have minimum wall thickness  standards for making lightning bolts rebound and lead sheathing to block ESP.

And a world where pointing your finger isn't just rude, it's assault.


----------



## Jay Verkuilen

Tony Vargas said:


> Bits of them doubtless did, but FWIW, 3.x declined to tag Stunning Fist as such, no (SU) - maybe because they /did/ make it a fighter bonus feat.  So we can't say D&D has never dropped the 'daily' on a non-caster ability.   It's a matter of scale & effect.  A fighter taking Stunning Fist wasn't suddenly the equal of a mage.




I suspect they didn't have it Su tagged so it wasn't dispel-bait or subject to Spell Resistance but I don't really know. Monks to me always felt pretty Su. Certainly there were daily powers before but they weren't a core part of most classes. 



> I can't say I was ever a big fan of n/day limitations, myself, even, or especialy, in the form of Vancian magic.  Early on, I did appreciate it, however ironically, on what I guess today would be a 'gamist' level - there was a challenge to picking the right spells and using them at the right time.  That challenge diminshed rapidly in later eds, when you could make/buy bushels of scrolls, or cast spontaneously, or, now in 5e, prep spells /and/ cast them spontaneously (if the 3.5 Wizard could've done that, it'd've cracked the mythical Tier 0).




In 2E I long ago dumped the "Vancian" preparation rules and let people prepare and cast freely, with clerics being able to cast whatever they wanted off their domain lists, rather like 5E but even freer. It didn't break the game because characters only had one spell a round and they could be interrupted without being careful. 




> It's as much or more the 'except for magic' than the 'daily sux' part that I disagree with on a philsophical level, I guess.




Fair enough. 



> Seriously, though, the idea of 'choose when to be awesome' is implicit in a limited use/higher-power ability.   Casters had been doing it for decades, so nobody cared, but the fighter gets to do it?  _Casus Belli_ for an edition war.
> I think that just cycles back around to familiarity and expectations.  Even those of us who don't care for n/day limitations (which, ironically, is both of us), got used to Vanican.




Heh. 

I guess the thing is for me I felt that for a caster that was part of the game. If I didn't want daily powers, I played other things. In the early version of 4E I didn't have a choice because every class had AW/E/D. (More about this below.) 




> Vance was one of the greats of Science Fiction, The Dying Earth was actually very inflluencial in the genre, MZB's Darkover, and Wolfe's Urth both owe a huge debt to Dying Earth...  of course, neither of them used Vancian /magic/.




They didn't. Basically nobody else used that. Vance didn't really have a system, per se, that was really Gygax running with it. 




> Not a valid definition, IMHO.  You're defining a goal: game that works, essentially, by what you fear it will have to give up to get there, rather than by what it will have to do to get there.
> For instance, right in the old DMG, EGG said that the 'relatively short spoken spell' of Vance's Dying Earth was chosen to make the magic-user playable as a PC, as opposed to the long rituals & elaborate materials that were more typical of magickal traditions & folklore.  It was a gamist reason.  Yet, now, it's enshrined as an 'in-world rationale' (that, I guess, is a post-hoc rationalization).  And, remember, the Vancian 'memorization' has long since been dropped in favor of another post-hoc rationalization, 'preparation.'




Gygax-Vance (probably a better name for it) memorization was always a bone of contention among people. Over and over people were bugged by it and constantly tried to come up with different systems and/or rationalizations.  

My issue with gamism isn't that I disagree with the fact that systems need to be elegant and playable. My issue is when gamist concerns become the first concern.  




> Liberating is not the word I'd use:  Easy.  DMing 4e was just straight-up easy.  I saw brand-new players transition from playing to running in a fraction of the time it had seemed to take in prior eds.




The person who used liberating felt that prior editions left too much up to him to decide so he meant it in the sense of "easy" as in "liberated from the burdens". He liked the fact that 4E built in the rulings right into the monster card for the most part and took care of most of the rulings for him. By contrast, I felt 4E was horribly confining as a DM; I seriously disliked running it. 




> One reason for the vehemence of the edition war, I think, is the dominant position of D&D.  It's easier to find a current-ed D&D game than anything else, by, like orders of magnitude.  I could play 5e four nights a week around here, no problem.  If you want to play Night's Dark Agents, you'll have to know somebody who knows somebody who might be able to get you in next year...




Yes, 100%. It was basically the only game in town. When 4E was coming out, White Wolf, the next biggest competitor, was dying out. Of course, Pathfinder came out. 




> Yep, I know it sounds crazy, but in a game where the primary activity of the player is making decisions for his charcter, a well-balanced game will give every player similar opportunities to make decisions...
> ...and some players are just annoying.  ;|




You're 100% right that some players are just annoying or slow. 

Oh sure, I don't mean to imply it's not decisions. I have no problem with decisions, though I do think there is a role for having one or two class archetypes that are intentionally simple, like the Champion Fighter, for the kind of player who doesn't like making a bunch of power choices but mostly just wants to roll to hit and damage. 

I think the issue is that the decisions felt very much the same to me across classes in a way they really hadn't before: "Which of my consumable resources do I use now or should I wait and just use an AW?" 

Without that same structure for classes without dailies or encounter powers, say one that has some interesting At Wills that are situationally useful. For example, in my heavily house-ruled 2E game, we'd devised combat maneuvers to make fighters more interesting that were rather feat-like. None of them are limited use; all are situational. For example, one allowed someone to Tumble (hence improve AC and disengage from a fight easily) but make an attack. Sometimes you needed to turtle so you'd Tumble to avoid being attacked but to be able to attack once was helpful. Another one allowed for a retaliation strike when an enemy rolled a natural 1. I'd let people make up their own maneuvers to support their character concept. One character is a swashbuckler type who likes his flintlocks. In general they kind of suck in D&D, of course, but we devised a maneuver, Pistolero, which let his character draw pistols from his bandolier as long as he has a hand free and use them as part of his extra attacks, with no off hand penalty. It's not really a boost in power but it supports the character's theme. 

I think 4E would have been quite hard to manage given all the dependencies and interconnected strings. It wasn't impossible, of course, but it would have been much more difficult IMO. 

Later on, Essentials had some pretty cool examples where they broke with the general pattern of everyone having the same number of AW/E/D, say with the Protector Druid having their dailies all be summons and most of their other abilities AW (I think---it's been a while). IMO Essentials was just much better than the original 4E classes, which is one reason I would have banned all pre-Essentials classes in any game I did had 5E not come out. In many ways I see 5E kept a lot (though not all) of what was good about 4E's later incarnation. I did like the Protector Druid a lot, and think that would have been a good druid build in 5E. It was not a shapeshifter but really a caster. 




> I missed the transition from problem players to DM-proofing.  Balance /does/ help with certain types of player problems, and it makes the DM's job easier, rather than making the game immune from him doing his job.




I might have lost my train of thought there. DM proofing removes a big part of the DM's job, at least a lot of the parts I like, such as world-building and tailoring rules support my concepts. By making things easy it got rid of the parts I actually like! 




> I can't say I've seen barbarians & avengers taking excessively long turns - often, it's a particular player, regardless of what they play.  I guess it's what those players were playing in your group at the time?




They spent a lot of time rolling damage and extra attacks with more damage. Leader types, by contrast, seemed to have very quick turns: Minor action healing, attack, move, done.


----------



## Lanefan

pemerton said:


> Here are two links to relevant posts/threads. It's about post 100 onwards in the second of those that you can see eg people saying that it would be a house rule for a Burning Hands spell to have a chance of setting fire to a scroll that an enemy wizard is holding.
> 
> But in any event, if it's a "facepalm" moment or "not doing it right" in 5e to ajudicate fireball in that fashion, it must follow that all those during the 4e era who attacked that edition because (eg) its fireballs don't set things alight (depsite haveing the _fire_ keyword, which - per the PHB p 55 - indicates "[e]xplosive bursts, fiery rays, or simple ignition") were wrong too.



If 4e fireballs also didn't cause flammable things within them to (more or less likely, depending on the material) catch fire, then my face and palm meet yet again. 

Lan-"then again, this is 4e, which sometimes had a rather distant relationship with logic"-efan


----------



## MichaelSomething

Lanefan said:


> If 4e fireballs also didn't cause flammable things within them to (more or less likely, depending on the material) catch fire, then my face and palm meet yet again.
> 
> Lan-"then again, this is 4e, which sometimes had a rather distant relationship with logic"-efan




Did you ever destroy a wizard's spell book and/or scrolls whenever they got hit with a fireball?

Though I admit most people handwaved it for convenience more so then a disregard for realism.


----------



## Lanefan

pemerton said:


> The _result _of someone else's play experience - eg a ruling that Gygax or some other earlier GM made while playing the game - is being presented as _input_ for someone else's play. So instead of playing your own game like Gygax et al did, the rulebook invites you to sing along with thepoay they already engaged in.



Or it tries to save you having to go through all the same rulings headaches they already hit and solved.



> Here's the text of the AD&D fireball spell; I've bolded the bits that olveraps with 4e and Basic D&D:
> 
> *A fireball is an explosive burst of flame, which* detonates with a low roar, and delivers damage proportionate to the level of the magic-user who cast it, i.e. 1 six-sided die (d6) for each level of experience of the spell caster.[/b] _Exception:_ Magic fireball wands deliver 6 die fireballs (6d6), magic staves with this capability deliver 8 die fireballs, and scroll spells of this type deliver a fireball of from 5 to 10 dice (d6 + 4) of damage. The burst of the _fireball_ does not expend a considerable amount of pressure, and the burst will generally conform to the shape of the area in which it occurs, thus covering an area equal to its normal spherical volume. [The area which is covered by the _fireball_ is a total volume of roughly 33,000 cubic feet (or yards)]. Besides causing damage to creatures, the _fireball_ ignites all combustible materials within its burst radius, and the heat of the _fireball_will melt soft metals such as gold, copper, silver, etc. Items exposed to the spell's effects must be rolled for to determine if they are affected. Items with a creature which makes its saving throw are considered as unaffected. The magic-user points his or her finger and speaks the range (distance and height) at which the fireball is to burst. A streak flashes from the pointing digit and, unless it impacts upon a material body prior to attaining the prescribed range, flowers into the _fireball_. *If creatures fail their saving throws, they all take full hit point damage frqm the blast. Those who make saving throws manage to dodge, fall flat or roll aside, taking 1/2 the full hit point damage - each and every one within the blast area.* The material component of this spell is a tiny ball composed of bat guano and sulphur.​
> There's a lot of text there that, in my view, manifests the "heavy hand of the game designer". What does it add to the game to have a rule that the fireball detonates with a low roar? What causes the roar if there's no pressure? Why does this spell have its verbal and somatic components specified, when very few others do?



Easy one first: a great many 1e spells, particularly arcane, specify their material components.

As for the low roar, why not?  

There's no denying the same information could be given in fewer words, but having all the info there is both useful and flavourful.  I'd rather have that than no guidelines at all.



> I don't see how 4e can in any way be conisdefred more presecriptive than that.



No more prescriptive, but a lot less flavourful and a lot less exciting (that 1e fireballs filled to a volume no matter what led to some wonderful unforeseen - and at times painful - results).


----------



## Lanefan

MichaelSomething said:


> Did you ever destroy a wizard's spell book and/or scrolls whenever they got hit with a fireball?



If the wizard (or anyone else) fails to save then anything carried also then has to save, as per the 1e DMG.  And yes, this has caused loss of all kinds of things, spellbooks and scrolls among 'em.


----------



## Tony Vargas

MichaelSomething said:


> Did you ever destroy a wizard's spell book and/or scrolls whenever they got hit with a fireball?



 Whenever you failed a save vs anything damaging, technically.  One of the most-ignored rules in D&D history, right after weapon v armor adjustments...


----------



## Jay Verkuilen

Lanefan said:


> Or it tries to save you having to go through all the same rulings headaches they already hit and solved.




Yes, this is very much another way to look at it, and of course, unlike karaoke, no Game Police were going to show up and tell you that you had to run it that way. 




> Easy one first: a great many 1e spells, particularly arcane, specify their material components.




Indeed they do. Components were a common thing throughout D&D incarnations except for 4E (as I recall, except for rituals) and possibly BECMI. 




> There's no denying the same information could be given in fewer words, but having all the info there is both useful and flavourful.  I'd rather have that than no guidelines at all.




As I've said before, Gygaxian verbosity was one of the best builders of a high vocabulary. 




> No more prescriptive, but a lot less flavourful and a lot less exciting (that 1e fireballs filled to a volume no matter what led to some wonderful unforeseen - and at times painful - results).




That could be both exploited---oh boy could that be exploited if you were slick about it---and helped ensure that fireball was super dangerous to cast into blind spaces. I understand why 3.X and subsequent editions got rid of that but think a lot got lost by making spells so much safer.


----------



## Jay Verkuilen

Tony Vargas said:


> Whenever you failed a save vs anything damaging, technically.  One of the most-ignored rules in D&D history, right after weapon v armor adjustments...




I'm pretty sure your spellbook needed to make its own save, but I could be wrong about that and, of course, 1E sometimes contradicted itself. Weapon vs armor adjustments were an incredible pain. Definitely not one of 1E's better ideas, at least in implementation.


----------



## Sadras

Lanefan said:


> If the wizard (or anyone else) fails to save then anything carried also then has to save, as per the 1e DMG.  And yes, this has caused loss of all kinds of things, spellbooks and scrolls among 'em.




 @_*Lanefan*_ it is impressive to have found a group of players that enjoy that much admin. 
I'm imagining several copies of spell books and their locations along with the specific number of spells included for each spell book. Is that about right?


----------



## Lanefan

Tony Vargas said:


> Whenever you failed a save vs anything damaging, technically.  One of the most-ignored rules in D&D history, right after weapon v armor adjustments...



Not in this house, bucko. 

We did rule a long time ago that if the damage dealt on a failed save was less than 10 points then only the most fragile of things (e.g. a scroll in hand when hit by a 7 point fire effect) needed to save.


----------



## Lanefan

Jay Verkuilen said:


> That could be both exploited---oh boy could that be exploited if you were slick about it---and helped ensure that fireball was super dangerous to cast into blind spaces. I understand why 3.X and subsequent editions got rid of that but think a lot got lost by making spells so much safer.



Too safe, IMO: an aspect I very quickly came to dislike about 3 (and later, 4-5e) spell design

Never mind that a long time ago we also put in a rule that the caster of any such spell had to roll to aim it properly - usually pretty easy, but rolling a 2 and having your fireball wreck on an obstacle halfway to its intended destination...yeah, there's risk when using this magic stuff. 



			
				Sadras said:
			
		

> @Lanefan it is impressive to have found a group of players that enjoy that much admin.
> I'm imagining several copies of spell books and their locations along with the specific number of spells included for each spell book. Is that about right?



Not really.  Just some people getting clever about how their books are protected.

Every time they kill a red dragon, for example, a fair bit of its hide comes home for use in constructing fire-resistant spellbook covers and-or containers.

But yes, ideally what spell is in what book is recorded - in practice it sometimes comes down to random roll if the player hasn't kept good records and has more than one book.

Lan-"as a character I got hit with friendly fire(ball) so many times I ended up buying a wizardslayer longsword - if you hit me now you'd better hope you kill me, as otherwise it'll be the last thing you do"-efan


----------



## Tony Vargas

Lanefan said:


> Too safe, IMO: an aspect I very quickly came to dislike about 3 (and later, 4-5e) spell design
> 
> Never mind that a long time ago we also put in a rule that the caster of any such spell had to roll to aim it properly - usually pretty easy, but rolling a 2 and having your fireball wreck on an obstacle halfway to its intended destination...yeah, there's risk when using this magic stuff.



 IIRC, 3e had a suggestion about requiring a targeting roll when sending one through a small space...

Yep: 







			
				SRD said:
			
		

> If you attempt to send the bead through a narrow passage, such as through an arrow slit, you must “hit” the opening with a ranged touch attack, or else the bead strikes the barrier and detonates prematurely.




... funny how much of 3e was "everyone's house rules...."

...or Len Lakofka's at any rate.


----------



## Flexor the Mighty!

Lanefan said:


> Too safe, IMO: an aspect I very quickly came to dislike about 3 (and later, 4-5e) spell design
> 
> Never mind that a long time ago we also put in a rule that the caster of any such spell had to roll to aim it properly - usually pretty easy, but rolling a 2 and having your fireball wreck on an obstacle halfway to its intended destination...yeah, there's risk when using this magic stuff.
> 
> Not really.  Just some people getting clever about how their books are protected.
> 
> Every time they kill a red dragon, for example, a fair bit of its hide comes home for use in constructing fire-resistant spellbook covers and-or containers.
> 
> But yes, ideally what spell is in what book is recorded - in practice it sometimes comes down to random roll if the player hasn't kept good records and has more than one book.
> 
> Lan-"as a character I got hit with friendly fire(ball) so many times I ended up buying a wizardslayer longsword - if you hit me now you'd better hope you kill me, as otherwise it'll be the last thing you do"-efan




I'm constantly fighting with my players over the idea that you need clear LOS to target a spell.   In 3e, 5e, ad now S&W.   To them you just fire that fireball through the legs or under the arms of the line of fighters in front.  The spell caster sits back, sips wine, and fires spells though his own lines.  

I keep expecting them to ask me to house rule that AOE spells cannot effect friends so you can just detonate them on your own position like easy mode Neverwinter Nights.  Their shenanigans vex me to no end!


----------



## pemerton

Lanefan said:


> If the wizard (or anyone else) fails to save then anything carried also then has to save, as per the 1e DMG.





Tony Vargas said:


> Whenever you failed a save vs anything damaging, technically. One of the most-ignored rules in D&D history, right after weapon v armor adjustments...



I don't think the DMG says this.

On page 80 there is the item saving throw chart, but other than descriptions of effect types (keywords, anyone?) there is no description of how to use the chart. The following page (p 81) does have a heading "Item Saving Throws", but it only offers the following:

These saving throws are self-explanatory in general. It is a case of either saving or failing. Potions and liquids which do not make their saving throws should be noted secretly by you - unless the player concerned has his or her character check to determine if the fluid was harmed. Such failure will not otherwise be notable without examination and testing.​
Furthermore, there are a few things on p 80 which suggests that the GM can call for item saving throws in circumstances other than when a player fails a saving throw. The first is that "fall"is a category, but falling in AD&D doesn't normally involve a saving throw. Second, the entry for "crushing blow" says that this includes "a blow from an ogre's or giant's weapon". Third, a normal blow includes "an attack by a normal-strength opponent". Fourth, any item "gains +5 on saving throws against attack forms in its own mode, i.e. blow vs. shield". It's not made clear when a GM might reasonably call for a save to see if a giant's blow smashes armour, or if a blocking shield is shattered (eg on any attack? on any hit? on a "called shot", however eactly that would work?), but those cases are being contemplated by these rules.

Anyway, the only place I know of in 1st ed AD&D that suggests that if a character saves then his/her items are safe is the fireball entry. I have a feeling that 2nd ed  AD&D may have had an express rule to this effect, but I'm not sure as I haven't read much of the DMG for that edition.


----------



## pemerton

Lanefan said:


> pemerton said:
> 
> 
> 
> 
> Why does this spell have its verbal and somatic components specified, when very few others do?
> 
> 
> 
> 
> a great many 1e spells, particularly arcane, specify their material components.
Click to expand...




Jay Verkuilen said:


> Components were a common thing throughout D&D incarnations except for 4E (as I recall, except for rituals) and possibly BECMI.



I didn't say anything about material components. Why does fireball have verabal and somatic components specified in the rulebook (ie  pointed finger, and speaking height and distance)? That's not a common thing in any edition of D&D. In AD&D fireball is almost unque in this respect.


----------



## pemerton

Jay Verkuilen said:


> I think you're cherry picking my quotes and making a false dichotomy. 1E fireball is one example of a clearly often problematic spell hence it got a ton of rulings. 4E had a very heavy hand of the designer all over the place. Clearly some people really liked it and others didn't, but the whole fact that 4E is a pretty radical redesign of what had been a fairly static system in many respects for a long time.



4e is different in some ways from 3E and AD&D. Each of those is different from the other also. (Eg 4e uses 3E conventions for ability scores and for defences; it's skill system is no more different from AD&D's than 3E's is, and arguably is closer to AD&D in spirt as level matters; its approach to monster design is intermediate between the two systems; but it departs from AD&D and 3E's spell charts; etc, etc.)

But that seems pretty separate from this "heavy hand of the designer" thing. 3E was designed too. So was AD&D, although much more haphazardly (each component was designed, but their interaction often was not).



Jay Verkuilen said:


> As to _fireball_ in Moldvay Basic... wait, how is that even in there? Basic only covered levels 1-3. (I don't have a copy of it anymore... long gone.)



There was a small list of 3rd level MU/Elf spells and 2nd level Cleric spells to be used for NPCs above 3rd level.



Lanefan said:


> If 4e fireballs also didn't cause flammable things within them to (more or less likely, depending on the material) catch fire, then my face and palm meet yet again.



I think you've missed my point.

The 4e rules don't say that a fireball doesn't et things alight. They say that a fireball is a _fire_ effect, which is defined as "explosive burss, fiery rays, or simply ignition" (PHB p 55); while the DMG, in the rules for damaging objects (p 66), says "you might rule that some kinds of damage are particularly effective against certain objects and grant the object vulnerability to that damage type. For example, a gauzy curtain or a pile of dry papers might have vulnerability 5 to fire because any spark is likely to destroy it." It was some posters on these boards who nevertheless asserted that, because the fireball targer line says "creatures in the burst", it doesn't burn things. And that is the sort of thing that gets held up as an example of 4e being "dissociated", and/or showing the "heavy hand" of the designer.

My point is that (i) Moldvay Basic has identical wording - it describes a fireball as doing damage to creatures caught in the burst - but no one argues for that reason that Basic is "dissociated"; and (ii) there are posters on these boards who say that fire spells in 5e don't set things alight unless they mention it, but no one uses that as an arguemnt that 5e is "dissociated" or has the "heavy hand" of the designer - they just diagree with those posters; hence (iii) it makes no sense that 4e is evaluated differently from those other editions in these respects. (Which you yourself do in yoiur signoff. What is your basis for saying that 4e is different from Basi c or 5e in respect of the way it presents the fireball spell and establishes a framework for its adjudication?)



Lanefan said:


> Or it tries to save you having to go through all the same rulings headaches they already hit and solved.



The same question applies: why is a couple of hundred words in the AD&D PHB judged useful stuff for solving headaches, but a clear presentation of the spell in the 4e template judged the "heavy hand" of the game designer? The point of the 4e template is exactly the same: it provides guidelines for adjudication. But they're less presecriptive than Gygax's stuff (see eg the GM-ruling approach to object vulnerabiity I just quoted from the DMG) _and_ more clear.



Jay Verkuilen said:


> this is very much another way to look at it, and of course, unlike karaoke, no Game Police were going to show up and tell you that you had to run it that way.



This makes me wonder where you do your karaoke; and also where you played 4e, such that the Game Police came and beat up on you if you ran things differently from what the books suggested!



Lanefan said:


> There's no denying the same information could be given in fewer words, but having all the info there is both useful and flavourful. I'd rather have that than no guidelines at all.
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> I don't see how 4e can in any way be conisdefred more presecriptive than tha
> 
> 
> 
> 
> No more prescriptive, but a lot less flavourful and a lot less exciting (that 1e fireballs filled to a volume no matter what led to some wonderful unforeseen - and at times painful - results).
Click to expand...


I don't see that it is very exciting to be told how many dice a fireball wand does. And there are contradictions also: the spell has no significant pressure but "detonates with a low roar"; it "ignites all combustible materials" but "_tems with a creature which makes its saving throw are considered as unaffected." Those aren't very exciting either. All that stuff seems to me like it should be either in generic rules for affecting objects, and/or generic rules for magic items.

As far as the expanstion-to-volume issue is concerned, nothing stops a 4e GM adjudicating a fireball in 4e exactly the same as they did in AD&D (ie saying that it filll 343 5' cubes, a little bit more than the earlier version).

Which goes also to the karaoke point: if that ruling is exciting, then why do you need the rulebooks imprimatur to implement it? After all, the first time that Gygax (or whomever) made that call, the rulebook didn't tell them too. To me it's a facepalm moment that people need the permission or even prescription from the rulebook to adjudicate effects in ways they think are appropriate._


----------



## billd91

pemerton said:


> I don't think the DMG says this.
> 
> On page 80 there is the item saving throw chart, but other than descriptions of effect types (keywords, anyone?) there is no description of how to use the chart. The following page (p 81) does have a heading "Item Saving Throws", but it only offers the following:
> 
> These saving throws are self-explanatory in general. It is a case of either saving or failing. Potions and liquids which do not make their saving throws should be noted secretly by you - unless the player concerned has his or her character check to determine if the fluid was harmed. Such failure will not otherwise be notable without examination and testing.​
> Furthermore, there are a few things on p 80 which suggests that the GM can call for item saving throws in circumstances other than when a player fails a saving throw. The first is that "fall"is a category, but falling in AD&D doesn't normally involve a saving throw. Second, the entry for "crushing blow" says that this includes "a blow from an ogre's or giant's weapon". Third, a normal blow includes "an attack by a normal-strength opponent". Fourth, any item "gains +5 on saving throws against attack forms in its own mode, i.e. blow vs. shield". It's not made clear when a GM might reasonably call for a save to see if a giant's blow smashes armour, or if a blocking shield is shattered (eg on any attack? on any hit? on a "called shot", however eactly that would work?), but those cases are being contemplated by these rules.




I might suggest not trying to exaggerate lack of clarity or obtuseness here. The fall category is pretty clear about what it means and when you consider the item descriptions, it's pretty clear that it gives you an idea how to determine if a mirror that's dropped more than 5' breaks or not. Plus there's the tidbit on p80 about Non-Magical Items.

It is assumed that the item in question is actually exposed to the form of attack, i.e. the blow falls on the item, the fall is such as to not cushion the item, the fire actually contacts the item, etc.​
It's reasonably clear that when the item is directly exposed to the hazard, you make the save - though with a modifying footnote about liquids in their containers.


----------



## billd91

pemerton said:


> I didn't say anything about material components. Why does fireball have verabal and somatic components specified in the rulebook (ie  pointed finger, and speaking height and distance)? That's not a common thing in any edition of D&D. In AD&D fireball is almost unque in this respect.




But not entirely unique. I assume it's to introduce complications for the player, particularly since it can explode prematurely if it hits an intervening body (such as an invisible wall). Burning Hands is, perhaps, even more specific about its somatic components, presumably, in order to justify its fan-like area of effect rather than other methods creative players may envision.


----------



## Lanefan

pemerton said:


> I don't think the DMG says this.



Then where does it come from?  I'm 99.9% sure it's not one of our houserules.



> On page 80 there is the item saving throw chart, but other than descriptions of effect types (keywords, anyone?) there is no description of how to use the chart. The following page (p 81) does have a heading "Item Saving Throws", but it only offers the following:
> 
> These saving throws are self-explanatory in general. It is a case of either saving or failing. Potions and liquids which do not make their saving throws should be noted secretly by you - unless the player concerned has his or her character check to determine if the fluid was harmed. Such failure will not otherwise be notable without examination and testing.​
> Furthermore, there are a few things on p 80 which suggests that the GM can call for item saving throws in circumstances other than when a player fails a saving throw. The first is that "fall"is a category, but falling in AD&D doesn't normally involve a saving throw. Second, the entry for "crushing blow" says that this includes "a blow from an ogre's or giant's weapon". Third, a normal blow includes "an attack by a normal-strength opponent". Fourth, any item "gains +5 on saving throws against attack forms in its own mode, i.e. blow vs. shield". It's not made clear when a GM might reasonably call for a save to see if a giant's blow smashes armour, or if a blocking shield is shattered (eg on any attack? on any hit? on a "called shot", however eactly that would work?), but those cases are being contemplated by these rules.
> 
> Anyway, the only place I know of in 1st ed AD&D that suggests that if a character saves then his/her items are safe is the fireball entry. I have a feeling that 2nd ed  AD&D may have had an express rule to this effect, but I'm not sure as I haven't read much of the DMG for that edition.



The entry for Lightning Bolt in the PH says (in typical unclear Gygaxian terms) to refer to the Fireball entry for how saves work, strongly implying both spells work the same in this regard.



> I didn't say anything about material components. Why does fireball have verabal and somatic components specified in the rulebook (ie pointed finger, and speaking height and distance)? That's not a common thing in any edition of D&D. In AD&D fireball is almost unque in this respect.



There's quite a few spells that give some indication as to their somatic components (e.g. the spread fingers for Burning Hands) but true, not many specify the verbal ones.


----------



## Lanefan

pemerton said:


> I think you've missed my point.
> 
> The 4e rules don't say that a fireball doesn't et things alight. They say that a fireball is a _fire_ effect, which is defined as "explosive burss, fiery rays, or simply ignition" (PHB p 55); while the DMG, in the rules for damaging objects (p 66), says "you might rule that some kinds of damage are particularly effective against certain objects and grant the object vulnerability to that damage type. For example, a gauzy curtain or a pile of dry papers might have vulnerability 5 to fire because any spark is likely to destroy it." It was some posters on these boards who nevertheless asserted that, because the fireball targer line says "creatures in the burst", it doesn't burn things. And that is the sort of thing that gets held up as an example of 4e being "dissociated", and/or showing the "heavy hand" of the designer.



OK.

But why not have all this info in one place - the spell write-up - rather than having to check three places to piece it together?  Further, having the effects on objects be in the DMG rather than the PH or spell write-up doesn't make it all that accessible to players, most of whom probably wouldn't own the DMG unless they were also DMs.



> My point is that (i) Moldvay Basic has identical wording - it describes a fireball as doing damage to creatures caught in the burst - but no one argues for that reason that Basic is "dissociated"; and (ii) there are posters on these boards who say that fire spells in 5e don't set things alight unless they mention it, but no one uses that as an arguemnt that 5e is "dissociated" or has the "heavy hand" of the designer - they just diagree with those posters; hence (iii) it makes no sense that 4e is evaluated differently from those other editions in these respects. (Which you yourself do in yoiur signoff. What is your basis for saying that 4e is different from Basi c or 5e in respect of the way it presents the fireball spell and establishes a framework for its adjudication?)



I'm not saying 5e is any better in some of these regards; if it wants to perpetuate what I see as mistakes then so be it.

What I want from a spell write-up (any edition) is that where necessary it go into some of the more obvious what-ifs and rulings said spell is liable to generate.  1e's Fireball and Lightning Bolt entries kind of try to do this, though both could certainly go further.

Also different is that both spells have been "simplified" since 1e - Fireball no longer fills to a volume and Lightning Bolts no longer rebound, thus requiring less verbiage in their write-ups.



> The same question applies: why is a couple of hundred words in the AD&D PHB judged useful stuff for solving headaches, but a clear presentation of the spell in the 4e template judged the "heavy hand" of the game designer? The point of the 4e template is exactly the same: it provides guidelines for adjudication. But they're less presecriptive than Gygax's stuff (see eg the GM-ruling approach to object vulnerabiity I just quoted from the DMG) _and_ more clear.



Are they more clear?  4e doesn't have the convenience of by-material saving throw matrices, so a DM is left on her own to determine how difficult it is for wood to save as opposed to soft metal or hard metal or leather.  Seems odd for what otherwise came across as a rules-not-rulings type of system.



> This makes me wonder where you do your karaoke; and also where you played 4e



Can someone explain what karaoke has to do with any of this?  That's the third or fourth time it's come up...



> I don't see that it is very exciting to be told how many dice a fireball wand does. And there are contradictions also: the spell has no significant pressure but "detonates with a low roar"; it "ignites all combustible materials" but "_tems with a creature which makes its saving throw are considered as unaffected." Those aren't very exciting either. All that stuff seems to me like it should be either in generic rules for affecting objects, and/or generic rules for magic items. _



_Perhaps, but I'd still prefer to see these things in the spell write-up anyway - even if it repeats what's written elsewhere - just so it's all in one place.




			As far as the expanstion-to-volume issue is concerned, nothing stops a 4e GM adjudicating a fireball in 4e exactly the same as they did in AD&D (ie saying that it filll 343 5' cubes, a little bit more than the earlier version).
		
Click to expand...


It was 33 10x10x10 cubes (33000 cu ft); each 10' cube would hold 8 5' cubes, which would mean 264 5' cubes would be about the same volume as a 1e fireball.

But despite 4e's famous Rule 0 (or page 42, whatever it was), there wasn't much encouragement to houserule it or change it much; unlike 1e which carried a strong sentiment of "make the game your own" (even though Gygax then railed against people doing exactly this!).




			Which goes also to the karaoke point: if that ruling is exciting, then why do you need the rulebooks imprimatur to implement it? After all, the first time that Gygax (or whomever) made that call, the rulebook didn't tell them too. To me it's a facepalm moment that people need the permission or even prescription from the rulebook to adjudicate effects in ways they think are appropriate.
		
Click to expand...


And here, oddly enough, I agree with you.  But someone else already making that ruling saves me from having to do it; equals less work for me (and "official" backup should anyone want to argue the point). 

Lanefan_


----------



## Jhaelen

MichaelSomething said:


> Did you ever destroy a wizard's spell book and/or scrolls whenever they got hit with a fireball?



Sure did!
It's not as bad as it sounds, though: typically wizards had very low strength and therefore only carried their travel spell books with them.


----------



## Manbearcat

Relevant to the current topic of conversation; below is the entry for Dungeon World’s Fireball Spell:

Fireball
Level 3 Evocation
Description

You evoke a mighty ball of flame that envelops your target and everyone nearby, inflicting 2d6 damage which ignores armor.

Nothing about setting aflame the target(s). Nothing about collateral damage to “things” (the text only says “everyone”, just like 4e’s “creatures”). Nothing about setting aflame unattended objects. No related keyword tech to cross reference (though DW has plenty of keyword tech).

So, presumably every D&D player who has wargaming and/or rules as physics bent would smuggle them into DW and assert that (a) this is evidence that DW is clearly a boardgame which is divorced from a shared fiction and (b) a DW Wizard can’t immolate “things” because the text says “everyone”.

I’m sure I’m incorrect, but I’d like someone who asserts that (a) and (b) apply to 4e but don’t apply to DW to explain why that is?


----------



## Tony Vargas

Manbearcat said:


> You evoke a mighty ball of flame that envelops your target and everyone nearby, inflicting 2d6 damage which ignores armor.
> 
> So, presumably every D&D player who has wargaming and/or rules as physics bent would smuggle them into DW and assert that (a) this is evidence that DW is clearly a boardgame which is divorced from a shared fiction and (b) a DW Wizard can’t immolate “things” because the text says “everyone”.



 It also 'ignores armor,' so not only does it not explicitly affect objects, it explicitly has no effect on a specific sort of object.


----------



## Lanefan

Manbearcat said:


> Relevant to the current topic of conversation; below is the entry for Dungeon World’s Fireball Spell:
> 
> Fireball
> Level 3 Evocation
> Description
> 
> You evoke a mighty ball of flame that envelops your target and everyone nearby, inflicting 2d6 damage which ignores armor.
> 
> Nothing about setting aflame the target(s). Nothing about collateral damage to “things” (the text only says “everyone”, just like 4e’s “creatures”). Nothing about setting aflame unattended objects. No related keyword tech to cross reference (though DW has plenty of keyword tech).
> 
> So, presumably every D&D player who has wargaming and/or rules as physics bent would smuggle them into DW and assert that (a) this is evidence that DW is clearly a boardgame which is divorced from a shared fiction and (b) a DW Wizard can’t immolate “things” because the text says “everyone”.
> 
> I’m sure I’m incorrect, but I’d like someone who asserts that (a) and (b) apply to 4e but don’t apply to DW to explain why that is?



As written that's a rather pathetic - or at best extremely lazy - spell description.

First off, how big is the fireball?  A rather glaring omission.  The only reference is "everyone nearby", but what constitutes "nearby"?  And does "everyone" include living things that aren't people e.g. a passing rat or a wizard's familiar?

Second off, how long does it last?  There's no duration listed, so are we to default to the D&D version that's pretty much instantaneous or does the fire hang around a while?

And third - yes, what else does it or can it affect besides creatures?  Or is this the DW equivalent of a smart bomb: hurts living matter but leaves everything else intact?  Does it light dry grass on fire?  Trees?  Does it melt gold or other soft metals?

Fourth, is the "ignores armor" clause there to indicate the fire bypasses any damage reduction due to armour worn (which makes sense) or to indicate the fire cannot damage or affect armour at all (which doesn't make sense)?

Obviously this spell write-up is going to force each DW DM to make her own series of rulings on how it works and what it does, which only means more work for her as she then has to note these rulings so it'll work the same next time.  Eventually her own write-up for the spell will end up resembling what's in the 1e D&D PH in length, if not necessarily in agreement depending on how she sees it.

Lanefan


----------



## billd91

Lanefan said:


> As written that's a rather pathetic - or at best extremely lazy - spell description.
> 
> First off, how big is the fireball?  A rather glaring omission.  The only reference is "everyone nearby", but what constitutes "nearby"?  And does "everyone" include living things that aren't people e.g. a passing rat or a wizard's familiar?




I dunno. Is "mighty" a keyword that indicates how big the fireball is? Or does it indicate it's a member of the BossToneS?


----------



## Shasarak

billd91 said:


> I dunno. Is "mighty" a keyword that indicates how big the fireball is? Or does it indicate it's a member of the BossToneS?




And worse then that, if you drop the Fireball does it actually take falling damage or not?


----------



## R_Chance

Tony Vargas said:


> It also 'ignores armor,' so not only does it not explicitly affect objects, it explicitly has no effect on a specific sort of object.




As I recall, in DW armor absorbs damage. This is a reference to that property and has nothing to do with the item (armor) itself.


----------



## Lanefan

billd91 said:


> I dunno. Is "mighty" a keyword that indicates how big the fireball is? Or does it indicate it's a member of the BossToneS?



While it could perhaps be indicating "mighty big" as a size, to be in the Bosstones would need two mightys.


----------



## Tony Vargas

Lanefan said:


> First off, how big is the fireball?  A rather glaring omission.  The only reference is "everyone nearby", but what constitutes "nearby"?



 In some games that are actually designed to be played without any sort of minis, play surface or granular position-tracking, 'Nearby' or 'Close' or "ReallyReallyReallyReally Far" or the like can have jargon meanings used in place of exact measurements to help determine things like range, area, & movement.



> And does "everyone" include living things that aren't people e.g. a passing rat or a wizard's familiar?



 Barring a jargon meaning, probably anyone that matters.  A passing rat would just be color (and probably just described as crisped), a passing rat that is a wizard's familiar, would take the 2d6 damage.



> Second off, how long does it last?  There's no duration listed, so are we to default to the D&D version that's pretty much instantaneous or does the fire hang around a while?



Presumably, something that gives no duration has no duration, though, again, the system may have a default, like, oh 3d6 turns, for instance.



> And third - yes, what else does it or can it affect besides creatures?  Or is this the DW equivalent of a smart bomb: hurts living matter but leaves everything else intact?  Does it light dry grass on fire?  Trees?  Does it melt gold or other soft metals?



 That's the 64 sp question, isn't it?



> Fourth, is the "ignores armor" clause there to indicate the fire bypasses any damage reduction due to armour worn (which makes sense) or to indicate the fire cannot damage or affect armour at all (which doesn't make sense)?



 Or it could imply that the fireball and armor are both sentient, but that the fireball is too full of itself ("I  am MIGHTY!") to give armor the time of day.

I'd expect full plate, for instance, to be quite punctilious ("How dare you, you hot-head!") about such sleights... 



> Obviously this spell write-up is going to force each DW DM to make her own series of rulings on how it works and what it does, which only means more work for her as she then has to note these rulings so it'll work the same next time.  Eventually her own write-up for the spell will end up resembling what's in the 1e D&D PH in length, if not necessarily in agreement depending on how she sees it.



Since DW uses PbtA, I'm guessing 'nah' to all that.



R_Chance said:


> As I recall, in DW armor absorbs damage. This is a reference to that property and has nothing to do with the item (armor) itself.



 That sounds plausible, and it saves the full plate from having to challenge the fireball to a duel.

Since you've volunteered to be my straight man:  what does DW have to say about 'nearby' or 'everyone,' and how does it feel about each DM ruling being treated as an iron-clad precedent...?


----------



## billd91

Lanefan said:


> While it could perhaps be indicating "mighty big" as a size, to be in the Bosstones would need two mightys.




Maybe he just rates a "Boss" without the "Tones".


----------



## pemerton

Tony Vargas said:


> It also 'ignores armor,' so not only does it not explicitly affect objects, it explicitly has no effect on a specific sort of object.



Huh? It clearly does have an effect on that armour: it burns through it (if leather) or heats it up (if metal)!


----------



## Tony Vargas

pemerton said:


> Huh? It clearly does have an effect on that armour: it burns through it (if leather) or heats it up (if metal)!



 That doesn't sound 'ignored' to me.  If something were burning through me I wouldn't feel ignored, at all, I'd feel quite put-upon.  I'd likely get steamed about it.


----------



## pemerton

Lanefan said:


> what else does it or can it affect besides creatures?  Or is this the DW equivalent of a smart bomb: hurts living matter but leaves everything else intact?  Does it light dry grass on fire?  Trees?  Does it melt gold or other soft metals?



It's a _mighty ball of flame_! What do you think it might do to dry grass?

Is this another facepalm moment?



Lanefan said:


> this spell write-up is going to force each DW DM to make her own series of rulings on how it works and what it does, which only means more work for her as she then has to note these rulings so it'll work the same next time.



What you call "more work" I would call "playing the game, and establishing a shared fiction at the table".


----------



## pemerton

Tony Vargas said:


> That doesn't sound 'ignored' to me.  If something were burning through me I wouldn't feel ignored, at all, I'd feel quite put-upon.  I'd likely get steamed about it.





Lanefan said:


> is the "ignores armor" clause there to indicate the fire bypasses any damage reduction due to armour worn (which makes sense) or to indicate the fire cannot damage or affect armour at all (which doesn't make sense)?



I asssume [MENTION=996]Tony Vargas[/MENTION]'s contribution is meant to be comic. But [MENTION=29398]Lanefan[/MENTION]'s seems literal, as if he really doesn't know how to choose between those two readings!


----------



## Tony Vargas

pemerton said:


> I asssume [MENTION=996]Tony Vargas[/MENTION]'s contribution is meant to be comic. But [MENTION=29398]Lanefan[/MENTION]'s seems literal, as if he really doesn't know how to choose between those two readings!



 I like to think comedy - even bad comedy - can be used to make a point.  (but not always)



pemerton said:


> It's a _mighty ball of flame_! What do you think it might do to dry grass?



 Get lost in it, resulting in a two-stroke penalty?

_...no point to that one, folks..._


----------



## Les Moore

Lanefan said:


> As written that's a rather pathetic - or at best extremely lazy - spell description.
> 
> First off, how big is the fireball?  A rather glaring omission.  The only reference is "everyone nearby", but what constitutes "nearby"?  And does "everyone" include living things that aren't people e.g. a passing rat or a wizard's familiar?
> 
> Second off, how long does it last?  There's no duration listed, so are we to default to the D&D version that's pretty much instantaneous or does the fire hang around a while?
> 
> And third - yes, what else does it or can it affect besides creatures?  Or is this the DW equivalent of a smart bomb: hurts living matter but leaves everything else intact?  Does it light dry grass on fire?  Trees?  Does it melt gold or other soft metals?
> 
> Fourth, is the "ignores armor" clause there to indicate the fire bypasses any damage reduction due to armour worn (which makes sense) or to indicate the fire cannot damage or affect armour at all (which doesn't make sense)?
> 
> Obviously this spell write-up is going to force each DW DM to make her own series of rulings on how it works and what it does, which only means more work for her as she then has to note these rulings so it'll work the same next time.  Eventually her own write-up for the spell will end up resembling what's in the 1e D&D PH in length, if not necessarily in agreement depending on how she sees it.
> 
> Lanefan




My limited experience with fireballs in the past indicated they were aimed, and damaged things in their path, not "everyone nearby".


----------



## R_Chance

Tony Vargas said:


> That sounds plausible, and it saves the full plate from having to challenge the fireball to a duel.
> 
> Since you've volunteered to be my straight man:  what does DW have to say about 'nearby' or 'everyone,' and how does it feel about each DM ruling being treated as an iron-clad precedent...?




I bet on the Fireball. As for the rest, as the magic 8 ball says: "uncertain".


----------



## Lanefan

Les Moore said:


> My limited experience with fireballs in the past indicated they were aimed, and damaged things in their path, not "everyone nearby".



That sounds more like a fire breath, or a modern-day flame-thrower.

A fireball is more like a modern-day grenade, only without the explosion - you throw it, and wherever it lands or hits something (where you aimed it, you hope!) becomes the center of a large brief ball of fire.


----------



## Manbearcat

Tony Vargas said:


> It also 'ignores armor,' so not only does it not explicitly affect objects, it explicitly has no effect on a specific sort of object.






Lanefan said:


> As written that's a rather pathetic - or at best extremely lazy - spell description.
> 
> First off, how big is the fireball?  A rather glaring omission.  The only reference is "everyone nearby", but what constitutes "nearby"?  And does "everyone" include living things that aren't people e.g. a passing rat or a wizard's familiar?
> 
> Second off, how long does it last?  There's no duration listed, so are we to default to the D&D version that's pretty much instantaneous or does the fire hang around a while?
> 
> And third - yes, what else does it or can it affect besides creatures?  Or is this the DW equivalent of a smart bomb: hurts living matter but leaves everything else intact?  Does it light dry grass on fire?  Trees?  Does it melt gold or other soft metals?
> 
> Fourth, is the "ignores armor" clause there to indicate the fire bypasses any damage reduction due to armour worn (which makes sense) or to indicate the fire cannot damage or affect armour at all (which doesn't make sense)?
> 
> Obviously this spell write-up is going to force each DW DM to make her own series of rulings on how it works and what it does, which only means more work for her as she then has to note these rulings so it'll work the same next time.  Eventually her own write-up for the spell will end up resembling what's in the 1e D&D PH in length, if not necessarily in agreement depending on how she sees it.
> 
> Lanefan




Alright, let me regrab DW's Fireball:



> Fireball
> Level 3 Evocation
> Description
> 
> You evoke a mighty ball of flame that envelops your target and everyone nearby, inflicting 2d6 damage which ignores armor.




*Near(by)* is a tag - "< > can see the whites of their eyes"

*Ignores Armor* is a tag - "Don’t subtract armor (armor is DR) from the damage taken"

The only relevant tag that we don't have is range.  DW leaves this up to the table.  Pretty much all tables use *Far *(shouting distance) as this is the standard D&D range.

Of course its instantaneous.  This is a Fireball.

That is all you need for an actual "rules-lite", "follow the fiction", "theater of the mind" game.  And this is how it might play out.

GM:  The dark portal can be seen even against the dead of night; flowing, shimmering, tar-like against the solemn blackness of moonlit, earthen midnight.  Every other moment, you can see the "tar" give way to a vision of the Black Gates of Death beyond.  Undead legions crawl through the thick, dimensional hole toward this world.  Baying erupts around you as the portal's guardians encircle your group from the distant treeline.  Glowing eyes reveal large canine forms.  Skin and muscle are missing here and there revealing mere bones unnaturally propelling the forms which features slick fur, beared fangs, and flattened ears.  The baying turns to growls as they skulk through the treeline...

Wizard:  "Elf-friend, can you make out the alpha!"

Elf Fighter:  I consult the spirits of my Signature Weapon (Heirloom move)!  I whisper to the blade "...who leads this pack?"  Gets a 7; GM will give you an impression. 

GM:  The sword whispers in your mind..."the master lurks nearest to its own master..."

Elf Figher:  "The one nearest the portal!"

GM:  Caution to the wind, two of the ghastly wolves explode from the tree-line and make a run at your group!

Wizard:  "I blast the big wolf nearest the portal and all of the undead it is vomiting forth!  If he can see the whites of the eyes of the creatures crawling to this world from the other side, then they get it too!"

GM:  Yup.  The portal is definitely "whites of their eyes territory" from your target.  Cast your spell and lets see what happens.  The wolves are closing, but they'll get their after your spell.

Wizard:  Cast a Spell Move.  Player gets a 7-9 and has to choose from:

1 - You draw unwelcome attention or put yourself in a spot. The GM will tell you how.
2 - The spell disturbs the fabric of reality as it is cast—take -1 ongoing to cast a spell until the next time you Prepare Spells.
3 - After it is cast, the spell is forgotten. You cannot cast the spell again until you prepare spells.

Wizard player rolls their damage (7) and chooses 1 so the GM evolves the fiction and makes the following soft move:

GM:  With a quickly-snuffed whimper, the explosion consumes the alpha.  A charred skull, bones and mottled flesh remain behind.  The chargers give momentary pause and those in the treeline whimper in unison.  Take +1 ongoing to Defy Danger against the other Wight Wolves!

Simultaneously, the eeriest scream you may have ever heard is born up from the spectral creatures that crawl awkwardly toward you.  Clearly affected by your mighty spell...yet still they come...

As the husk of the burning alpha collapses into the knee-high grass, tiny flickers of orange flame emerge.  The glow slowly gathers, no more than that of a torchlight...but growing...

Meanwhile, back at your own position.  The thigh-high grass that you used to skulk in here quickly turns from friend to foe!  The blazing end of your staff has horrific recoil as you loose the mighty ball of fire!  Your arm flings wildly behind you as you try to control it!  Its either going into the grass at your feet and setting it on fire, or you're letting go and launching your staff somewhere off into the darkness behind you!   

What's it gonna be?



So yeah, that is how it would go GMing DW.  The knee-high grass at the portal catches alight due to the burning copse (slowly and not an immediate threat, but something that can come in play later...for good or ill).  And because of the 7-9, the Wizard needs to decide between losing his staff (and whatever mechanical advantage comes with the staff...which might be a move or some kind of passive benefit or both) or creating a burning hazard at the feet of the group (therefore a Danger to be immediately Defied and something that will be persistent unless dealt with).


----------



## Emerikol

Personally, in a complex battle I prefer some sort of visual representation whether it be tokens or minis.  I'm not a collector of minis though so that is the extent of my desire.  I played 1e and 2e completely TOTM.  

I think the game allowing for both styles is the ideal place to be.  I think 4e had many issues for a large number of gamers and the miniatures requirement was the least of it.  

I do think 5e, if you can get past some of the metagame elements, feels a lot like 1e/2e.  It's more of a successor to 2e than either 3e or 4e.  Sadly, the complexity brought in by 3e is not something I hate if it's done well.  We will see if Pathfinder which seems intent on targeting that audience will achieve their objective.


----------



## Jay Verkuilen

pemerton said:


> 4e is different in some ways from 3E and AD&D. Each of those is different from the other also. (Eg 4e uses 3E conventions for ability scores and for defences; it's skill system is no more different from AD&D's than 3E's is, and arguably is closer to AD&D in spirt as level matters; its approach to monster design is intermediate between the two systems; but it departs from AD&D and 3E's spell charts; etc, etc.)
> 
> But that seems pretty separate from this "heavy hand of the designer" thing. 3E was designed too. So was AD&D, although much more haphazardly (each component was designed, but their interaction often was not).




_Every_ game clearly has the "Hand of the Designer" insofar as they are designed. 

What I meant by the "_Heavy_ Hand of the Designer" is that 4E was much more intricately assembled and very relentlessly game balanced with all the interactions thought through and prescribed. It was written in a manner that did not invite the DM to do much alteration of the rules because of that. I know there were people who didn't feel that way, but I for one---and obviously not just me---really felt that alterations were essentially impossible and that my hands were tied as DM. 

A number of folks here have said "I didn't feel a need to alter 4E because it _was_ balanced" but that's not necessarily the only reason to alter a game. I often want to shift things around to realize a particular vision. This is something I've done in pretty much every version of D&D I've run except 4E. My 3.5 campaign, for instance, had a lot of _Unearthed Arcana_ rules. 

However, I felt that, because of how intensely designed 4E was, this was essentially impossible. My understanding was that this was part of the design intent: WotC felt that by having such a tight ruleset it would take that issue out of the hands of the DM. For some DMs this was very much freedom. I know at least one DM who loved the fact that he didn't have to think about any of the design space. However, I chafed at it and never enjoyed running 4E. I even felt it was hard to design monsters and magic items. 

There were other reasons that I didn't like 4E on the balance, although there were many parts of it I did think were well-done. 




> There was a small list of 3rd level MU/Elf spells and 2nd level Cleric spells to be used for NPCs above 3rd level.




Ah, yeah, I recall that now.


----------



## pemerton

Jay Verkuilen said:


> 4E was much more intricately assembled and very relentlessly game balanced with all the interactions thought through and prescribed. It was written in a manner that did not invite the DM to do much alteration of the rules because of that. I know there were people who didn't feel that way, but I for one---and obviously not just me---really felt that alterations were essentially impossible and that my hands were tied as DM.
> 
> <snip>
> 
> I often want to shift things around to realize a particular vision. This is something I've done in pretty much every version of D&D I've run except 4E. My 3.5 campaign, for instance, had a lot of _Unearthed Arcana_ rules.
> 
> However, I felt that, because of how intensely designed 4E was, this was essentially impossible.



Because I don't know what changes, or even what sorts of changes, you're talking about, I don't really know how to respond.

In my 4e game I've designed feats and themes, adapted paragon paths and epic destinies, and created or modified magic items. And when it comes to action resolution (as opposed to PC build), I've used skill challenges for a variety of different situations (social, exploratory, dispelling magical effects, etc); and have used various approaches to resting depending on the fictional situation and pacing needs.

Just as one example of an interaction that is not prescribed, but is easy to resolve using the adjudicative tools provided: can Burning Hands melt the zone of ice (difficult terrain) created by Icy Terrain? AD&D answers these questions one spell description at a time. 3E is similar, although in some cases it is mediated via keywords (eg Light vs Darkness spells). In 4e there are just keywords and page 42: each table is expected to establish its own fiction.



Jay Verkuilen said:


> I even felt it was hard to design monsters and magic items.



You're the first person I've heard say that designing monstersin 4e is hard.


----------



## Jay Verkuilen

pemerton said:


> Because I don't know what changes, or even what sorts of changes, you're talking about, I don't really know how to respond.
> 
> In my 4e game I've designed feats and themes, adapted paragon paths and epic destinies, and created or modified magic items.




Rules to reinforce the theme I wanted. In my 3.5 game I ran from 2004-2007, I was using a lot of _UA_ options: Wounds/Vitality, gestalt classes and Eberron style action points to strongly differentiate races, armor as DR with class-based defense, and a few other things. These were very widespread changes, though many were inspired by Star Wars D20 Revised. I felt 3.X was much more hackable in this regard and would feel fairly comfortable in 5E doing something similar. No way in 4E. 

Even for adding new themes or epic destinies I felt like that was a no go. A lot of it was how dependent on the Character Builder 4E was. I felt that most of what you're describing was essentially impossible given the fact that most players I encountered essentially insisted on using the CB. 




> And when it comes to action resolution (as opposed to PC build), I've used skill challenges for a variety of different situations (social, exploratory, dispelling magical effects, etc); and have used various approaches to resting depending on the fictional situation and pacing needs.




I felt much more open to adjudicate Skill Challenges as I wanted. I wouldn't tell people they were in a Skill Challenge and just call for skill checks here and there, slowly accumulating successes or failures. 




> Just as one example of an interaction that is not prescribed, but is easy to resolve using the adjudicative tools provided: can Burning Hands melt the zone of ice (difficult terrain) created by Icy Terrain? AD&D answers these questions one spell description at a time. 3E is similar, although in some cases it is mediated via keywords (eg Light vs Darkness spells). In 4e there are just keywords and page 42: each table is expected to establish its own fiction.




Yeah, you have mentioned that sort of thing before. I'm not sure I totally agree that AD&D answers those things one thing at a time but is instead is simply inconsistent about it, which makes sense given that AD&D, especially the DMG, was heavily made up of a collection of different _Dragon _articles. 

All I can say is you must have had a very different player base than me. My groups would have fought me on that. 4E really brought out a "RAW" fetish in some people. That was growing in 3E, of course and I don't pretend to say it wasn't around before, but it just shifted and became more common. 




> You're the first person I've heard say that designing monstersin 4e is hard.




I've heard it from other folks, too. I suspect for me a lot of it was just the burden of all the intricate rules. By the time I started doing that sort of thing I felt my hands were so tied I just didn't want to. I hacked a few monsters but for the most part, I just didn't ever feel _invited _to do anything but run things the way they were written. 4E didn't have templates (edit: I may be wrong about this, need to check), for instance, (something I really wish 5E had to a real degree).


----------



## pemerton

Jay Verkuilen said:


> 4E didn't have templates, for instance, that I recall (something I really wish 5E had to a real degree).



Various sorts of templates and monster themes are found in the DMG, the DMG2, the Plane Above, I think Open Grave, and I'm pretty sure other books as well that I'm not remembering at the moment.


----------



## Jay Verkuilen

pemerton said:


> Various sorts of templates and monster themes are found in the DMG, the DMG2, the Plane Above, I think Open Grave, and I'm pretty sure other books as well that I'm not remembering at the moment.




I'll have to check... I could very well be wrong about this point. 

5E certainly lacks them (with a few exceptions), which I think is a pretty major missing piece in the system. Some changes are fairly trivial, of course, such as switching damage types or resistances around.


----------



## Tony Vargas

pemerton said:


> Because I don't know what changes, or even what sorts of changes, you're talking about, I don't really know how to respond.



 I think fundamental changes, the kind you use to fix up a system or get it to evoke (force) a specific style, feel, or theme.   IMHO, you can generally get what you want out of 4e that way without hacking the system, per se, just being selective about what you allow in and what you use when you design adventures.
Low-/no- magic is the example I like to use because it's so problematic in all other editions even if you do take a machete to them, but in 4e you just allow only martial classes, turn on Inherent bonuses, and off you go.


It was easy to cut things from 4e:  you could ban a class or a whole source - or allow only one source - and things'd still work, because niche protection had died with the other sacred cows, for instance.  It was easy to add certain things, especially monsters, but also items (or even artifacts) if they were one-off...  
But there wasn't much call to tear the system down and rebuild the engine.




> You're the first person I've heard say that designing monstersin 4e is hard.



 Nod, monsters were pretty easy to create, and even easier to re-skin & tweak.  
Magic items could be harder to design if you tried to stay inside the lines.  4e magic items were designed as relatively minor character build resources, you weren't meant to be defined by an item, they weren't meant to too significantly power you up. When they would appear key in some OP build, they'd get errata'd (until Essentials, of course).  Trying to stick to that was a PitA and did not result in the most interesting items (all the good, mediocre, and marginal ideas were taken, it seemed).  But, a unique item (not as complicated as an artifact, but more substantial than a regular 4e item), one the players couldn't just make/buy, that could be fun (and, with not restrictions beyond not wanting to torpedo your campaign), comparatively easy.



Jay Verkuilen said:


> I'll have to check... I could very well be wrong about this point.
> 
> 5E certainly lacks them (with a few exceptions), which I think is a pretty major missing piece in the system. Some changes are fairly trivial, of course, such as switching damage types or resistances around.



 Templates weren't a big deal in 3.x/4e, IMHO.  They're a minor convenience that create themed monsters that the players might notice (or not).  With or without them you, you could always just create monsters with certain commonalities, anyway.


----------



## Jay Verkuilen

Tony Vargas said:


> I think fundamental changes, the kind you use to fix up a system or get it to evoke (force) a specific style, feel, or theme.




Exactly, as opposed to the themes that WotC built into the design, such as the genre emulation that you noted was a lot of 4E's design choices. 




> IMHO, you can generally get what you want out of 4e that way without hacking the system, per se, just being selective about what you allow in and what you use when you design adventures.






> Magic items could be harder to design if you tried to stay inside the lines.




From all this discussion I wonder If much of my issue really came down to the fact that things like the CB and the general intricacies of the rules such as the long list of powers for every class, the long list of feats, etc., just made me feel a lot of pressure to stay in the lines and/or increase the burden of coloring outside the lines. 

In retrospect I think that you're right---I could have just dumped whole classes or whatever, but that just didn't feel like a live option to me. I'm pretty sure I would have had a player revolt on my hands if I did. 




> 4e magic items were designed as relatively minor character build resources, you weren't meant to be defined by an item, they weren't meant to too significantly power you up.




A DM of mine at the time put it this way: "4E magic items were both utterly boring and totally necessary." (This was pre-Inherent Bonuses, but to make those work you really needed to get rid of essentially all items.) 

The "milestone" daily item use limit was... ugh. I know this is so last week, but that was one of the worst examples of a gamist/dissociated/whatever you want to call it I've literally ever seen. I _totally _get why they did it from a game balance perspective, but it just felt wrong. It's one reason I dislike both concentration and attunement as they are implemented in 5E. They "work" mechanically but fail to reinforce a theme. Instead they're blatantly about game balance. Clearly I have a delicate tolerance for such things....


----------



## Tony Vargas

Jay Verkuilen said:


> Exactly, as opposed to the themes that WotC built into the design, such as the genre emulation that you noted was a lot of 4E's design choices.



 Fantasy can be a fairly broad genre, D&D traditionally did it's own oddball take on the genre, more or less by accident, and people really expect it to evoke that very strongly, since it has done so consistently for decades.  4e left that unique sub-genre for dead in a field of slaughtered sacred cows that would have given alien cattle mutilators pause.  Instead, it embraced the broader fantasy genre, particularly the pop-culture 'action' side of it - to the point of being almost more an action-genre RPG focused on fantasy as the default example than a fantasy genre RPG leaning toward action.  

It was a disconcerting change.



> From all this discussion I wonder If much of my issue really came down to things like the CB and the general intricacies of the rules such as the long list of powers for every class, the long list of feats, etc., just made me feel a lot of pressure to stay in the lines ....



 I was way more into 4e than you, and I felt that way, too.  The design didn't beg to be fixed up and re-built in its details the way classic D&D/OSR and 5e do.   Customizing 4e to a campaign/theme/feel was more a matter of taking away what didn't fit than re-designing.



> In retrospect I think that you're right---I could have just dumped whole classes or whatever, but that just didn't feel like a live option to me. I'm pretty sure I would have had a player revolt on my hands if I did.



 It depends on the player, I guess.  I've run or played in games where everyone just happened to play certain sorts of characters.  All-martial, happened a couple of times, with barely an issue (in one case, out of the 13-wk encounters season, our all-martial party flubbed one skill challenge for want of any rituals or arcana skill, for instance - so the following battle was harder, but, hey, all-martial party, we could handle a tough battle).  
In other editions, that can easily crash and burn if the DM doesn't take measures to compensate, so the impetus is very much there to hack the system if you do want to do something like that.  Essentials would also ask everyone to play characters from the latest supplement, which, amazingly, also worked fine most of the time.  The campaign I decided to go ahead and finish out (still! 30 is a lotta levels, y'know) is still all Heroes of the Feywild tied-in characters.  
Skalds & Thieves have a little trouble keeping up with Epic but it still works...




> A DM of mine at the time put it this way: "4E magic items were both utterly boring and totally necessary." (This was pre-Inherent Bonuses, but to make those work you really needed to get rid of essentially all items.)



 Inherent bonuses came in w/in, I think it was, 9 months, though the idea is an obvious one (it had been floated much later in 3.x, too, IIRC).  Only three items types of items were assumed in the math, if you clicked on inherent bonuses, you could still use items, you just didn't need to cycle those three critical ones about twice a Tier.  You could find a +1 flaming sword, say, and use it your whole career, your inherent bonuses would just replace the +1.  No need to get rid of any other sorts of items, though it was a low-magic option and it wouldn't make a lot of sense to turn it on buy still allow profligate make/buy assumptions...



> The "milestone" daily item use limit was... ugh. I know this is so last week, but that was one of the worst examples of a gamist/dissociated/whatever you want to call it I've literally ever seen. I _totally _get why they did it from a game balance perspective, but it just felt wrong. It's one reason I dislike both concentration and attunement as they are implemented in 5E. They "work" mechanically but fail to reinforce a theme. Instead they're blatantly about game balance. Clearly I have a delicate tolerance for such things....



 I really like attunement (concentration is kinda bowdlerized 'easy mode' from 4e sustain takin actions or old-school concentration requirements to cast anything, but its still a good idea to have something like it).  I've liked it since I first saw it ('81?) in RuneQuest(c1978), though, so it has that familiarity thing going for me, and, in fact, added a similar mechanic in one 4e campaign (it was a re-boot of an old AD&D one, in which I'd adopted RQ attunement).  Likewise, I feel like Essentials getting rid of the item daily limit and replacing it with lame/arbitrary 'rarity' was a big mistake.  The item daily limit kept the focus on the character.  Like surges only being triggered by healing powers, item needing the character to provide the power/will/whatever to activate their better powers was a nice, genre-appropriate take.  Maybe not s'much as 'destined wielders' and the like but still gave a solid heroic feel.  

Of course, it also, and probably primarily, prevented the make/buy/hording of low-level items to spam their dailies, /and/ incentivized longer adventuring days.  
Just another case of good design dovetailing mechanical necessities with genre tropes.


----------



## Jay Verkuilen

Tony Vargas said:


> Fantasy can be a fairly broad genre, D&D traditionally did it's own oddball take on the genre, more or less by accident, and people really expect it to evoke that very strongly, since it has done so consistently for decades.




Yes, that's true. 




> 4e left that unique sub-genre for dead in a field of slaughtered sacred cows that would have given alien cattle mutilators pause.  Instead, it embraced the broader fantasy genre, particularly the pop-culture 'action' side of it - to the point of being almost more an action-genre RPG focused on fantasy as the default example than a fantasy genre RPG leaning toward action.




"Action-genre RPG" is what I think I felt when I've said "minis game" in the past. The encounters as written generally seemed to be set-piece scenarios. A lot of this is driven by the impetus of having a board but many of the early modules really felt very much like "here's my cool setup" regardless of how illogical it was.  




> I was way more into 4e than you, and I felt that way, too.  The design didn't beg to be fixed up and re-built in its details the way classic D&D/OSR and 5e do.   Customizing 4e to a campaign/theme/feel was more a matter of taking away what didn't fit than re-designing.




OK, so it wasn't just me. 




> In other editions, that can easily crash and burn if the DM doesn't take measures to compensate, so the impetus is very much there to hack the system if you do want to do something like that.




That makes sense. 




> Inherent bonuses came in w/in, I think it was, 9 months, though the idea is an obvious one (it had been floated much later in 3.x, too, IIRC).




I thought it was in the Dark Sun book, which was a few years on, but I'm not sure. 




> Only three items types of items were assumed in the math, if you clicked on inherent bonuses, you could still use items, you just didn't need to cycle those three critical ones about twice a Tier.  You could find a +1 flaming sword, say, and use it your whole career, your inherent bonuses would just replace the +1.  No need to get rid of any other sorts of items, though it was a low-magic option and it wouldn't make a lot of sense to turn it on buy still allow profligate make/buy assumptions...




I liked Inherent Bonuses quite a bit, actually. 




> I really like attunement (concentration is kinda bowdlerized 'easy mode' from 4e sustain takin actions or old-school concentration requirements to cast anything, but its still a good idea to have something like it).  I've liked it since I first saw it ('81?) in RuneQuest(c1978), though, so it has that familiarity thing going for me, and, in fact, added a similar mechanic in one 4e campaign (it was a re-boot of an old AD&D one, in which I'd adopted RQ attunement).




Don't misunderstand me: I don't mind the _idea_ of either. What I dislike is the implementation. 4E's implementation of concentration was IMO much better than 5E's. Some spells cost you your minor action. Others cost you your action. If you had two things that worked on minor actions, well, goodbye to your action. It depended on what you were doing and wasn't just some kind of hard "because I said so!" limit. 




> Likewise, I feel like Essentials getting rid of the item daily limit and replacing it with lame/arbitrary 'rarity' was a big mistake.




Yes, I agree, and the fact that rarity was next to illogical with little rhyme or reason didn't help. 




> The item daily limit kept the focus on the character.  Like surges only being triggered by healing powers, item needing the character to provide the power/will/whatever to activate their better powers was a nice, genre-appropriate take.  Maybe not s'much as 'destined wielders' and the like but still gave a solid heroic feel.




See for me I'd have accomplished it in a way that reinforced themes via imposing a cost rather than by a hard game mechanical limit. For instance, if you want to attune, have it start costing you healing surges or hit dice (or something). That keeps it inside the world. 

Another would be to have the item do one thing with attunement and do less without it. I'm writing up some items to post to DMsguild and put in a bunch that had that kind of thing. If you use it it does X but if you attune it does X+Y. (In some cases it activates curses, so attuning isn't necessarily so nice.) 

Milestone was just... weird. It's much the same reason I don't like the "escalation die" from 13A, even though I totally get the genre effect it simulates. It does it in a fashion that feels like it breaks the fourth wall to me. 




> Of course, it also, and probably primarily, prevented the make/buy/hording of low-level items to spam their dailies, /and/ incentivized longer adventuring days.
> Just another case of good design dovetailing mechanical necessities with genre tropes.




I know _why _they did it and I support the reasoning, but as I said, it was done in a crassly game mechanical way that really throws me out of the secondary reality of the game world. It had a goal of reinforcing something but didn't do it in a way that was inherent to the character in the world. So for me, it's _not_ good design. I totally get the fact that things like spell slots and the general action economy fall into that territory too, but for some reason those don't bug me nearly as much as "oh well, the universe just says you can only attune _three _items and that's _it_." 

I really don't like my face rubbed in game mechanics regardless of whether they have a good effect.


----------



## Tony Vargas

Jay Verkuilen said:


> "Action-genre RPG" is what I think I felt when I've said "minis game" in the past. The encounters as written generally seemed to be set-piece scenarios. A lot of this is driven by the impetus of having a board but many of the early modules really felt very much like "here's my cool setup" regardless of how illogical it was.



 I can see that.    Though, 'regardless of how illogical it was' is, I think, one way in which 4e was evocative of the classic game, since old-school dungeons were notorious for quite crazy layouts and bizarro mixes of monsters & the like.  



> I thought it was in the Dark Sun book, which was a few years on, but I'm not sure.



 I thought it was PH2.... (which was 8 months in, not 9, my mistake)... looks like it may have been DMG2, so 2009, better'n a year, but I seem to remember using the idea in 3.5... I just can't find where it was introduced into 3.5, since 'Inherent bonus" was just one of the 18 or so named bonuses in that edition, and included the stat bonuses from manuals & the like, as well as, I'm sure, being used for magic-item-less games to fill in the lack of expected enhancement bonuses.

I liked Inherent Bonuses quite a bit, actually. 
Don't misunderstand me: I don't mind the _idea_ of either. What I dislike is the implementation. 4E's implementation of concentration was IMO much better than 5E's. Some spells cost you your minor action. Others cost you your action. If you had two things that worked on minor actions, well, goodbye to your action. It depended on what you were doing and wasn't just some kind of hard "because I said so!" limit. 
Yes, I agree, and the fact that rarity was next to illogical with little rhyme or reason didn't help. 
See for me I'd have accomplished it in a way that reinforced themes via imposing a cost rather than by a hard game mechanical limit. For instance, if you want to attune, have it start costing you healing surges or hit dice (or something). That keeps it inside the world. [/quote] Ooh, I like that.  You attune an item, and part of your 'life force' is merged with it, no longer available for healing or other uses.  Creates a strong sense of attunement really being this potent metaphysical link, and is a very real mechanical price.  



> Milestone was just... weird. It's much the same reason I don't like the "escalation die" from 13A, even though I totally get the genre effect it simulates. It does it in a fashion that feels like it breaks the fourth wall to me.



 The fourth wall has it comin', IMHO.    Seriously, RPGs are something of a 4th-wall breaking hobby, to begin with, since players fill the roles of both the characters in a story interacting with the three walls, /and/ of the audience watching from behind the 4th wall.
And, yeah, I liked milestones & like the escalation die (and icon relationships).  They all help capturing the flow of stories in genre, vs the more pragmatic way games will tend flow if you leave them with only simulation-style rules (modeling setting, being de-facto laws of physics) rather than also having narrative-enabling rules (modeling genre conventions and storytelling) and keeping all of those functional as rules, of a game, meant to actually be played by the rules, for fun ('gamist').  



> for some reason those don't bug me nearly as much as "oh well, the universe just says you can only attune _three _items and that's _it_."



 But, three is a mystically significant number!


----------



## Jay Verkuilen

Tony Vargas said:


> I can see that.    Though, 'regardless of how illogical it was' is, I think, one way in which 4e was evocative of the classic game, since old-school dungeons were notorious for quite crazy layouts and bizarro mixes of monsters & the like.




Yeah they were definitely that way. Interestingly enough, the classic of bizarro world dungeons, White Plume Mountain, was originally written as a joke. Evidently Lawrence Schick never thought it would be published as-is!




> Ooh, I like that.  You attune an item, and part of your 'life force' is merged with it, no longer available for healing or other uses.  Creates a strong sense of attunement really being this potent metaphysical link, and is a very real mechanical price.




Right, and that's why I really like 4E's approach to concentration better than 5E's. It has a cost built into the system. 5E does, too, but it's essentially an off or on cost, not one that seems like it obeys effects being proportional to cause. 

Having attunement cost life is similar to how item attunement works in _Exalted_, although there it works on your essence (aka mana points). The more items you have and want to control the more of your own personal mojo you have to lock up to do that. 




> The fourth wall has it comin', IMHO.    Seriously, RPGs are something of a 4th-wall breaking hobby, to begin with, since players fill the roles of both the characters in a story interacting with the three walls, /and/ of the audience watching from behind the 4th wall.
> And, yeah, I liked milestones & like the escalation die (and icon relationships).




IMO the 13A icons are great. They have a game mechanical consequence that's also part of the game world and reinforces the flavor of the world. It's even possible you'll become an Icon at the end of your adventuring days! That's cool. 

The escalation die could be a fantastic way to manifest the dynamics of genre combat without having it just "be there". I'll have to check 13A to see if there is a rationale---it may have one. I'm not sure what that rationale would be exactly, but making it a part of the world helps get the game mechanical effects as well as reinforcing the theme. 




> They all help capturing the flow of stories in genre, vs the more pragmatic way games will tend flow if you leave them with only simulation-style rules (modeling setting, being de-facto laws of physics) rather than also having narrative-enabling rules (modeling genre conventions and storytelling) and keeping all of those functional as rules, of a game, meant to actually be played by the rules, for fun ('gamist').




Like my point of attune at a cost of life, these don't have to be in conflict but WotC seems to miss opportunities to use rules that work game mechanically to reinforce themes. 

For example, in _Pillars of Eternity_ (aka "what 4E would be if it had a computer managing all the bookkeeping") there are some classes who have a core mechanic that builds in a delay. Three examples are the chanter, cipher, and monk. The chanter is the _Pillars _bard. They chant to buff the party while fighting. After chanting enough, they can cast spells. The more chanting they do, the more powerful the spells they can cast. This reinforces the fact that their spells take some time to build up. The cipher works similarly but they need to inflict damage before casting spells---their mana pool is filled up by the damage they deal to enemies. Monks have their abilities fueled by the damage they _take_. In this case the game mechanics are clever but they work harmoniously to reinforce the _themes _of the characters in question. All three get nastier over time and thus can't just nova right at the start. In other cases _Pillars _fails on making the game rules align with the world itself, such as hard disallowing summons outside of combat. 




> But, three is a mystically significant number!




Yeah that was Jeremy Crawford's "explanation" for it. Bah. What a lazy rationalization. He annoys me so much that if I see a video of him I know not to watch it.


----------



## Tony Vargas

Jay Verkuilen said:


> Like my point of attune at a cost of life, these don't have to be in conflict but WotC seems to miss opportunities to use rules that work game mechanically to reinforce themes.



 It's like any signal, encoding and decoding both matter.  Game designers should try to model the genre & the setting & make a good, functional game all three.  We should cut them some slack, and make the effort of imagination to accommodate near (or not so near) misses - the community has not been too consistent with that.



> Yeah that was Jeremy Crawford's "explanation" for it. Bah. What a lazy rationalization. He annoys me so much that if I see a video of him I know not to watch it.



 But it's maaaaagic!   

_...what? nobody remembers Doug Henning?_


----------



## Lanefan

[MENTION=996]Tony Vargas[/MENTION] - [MENTION=6873517]Jay Verkuilen[/MENTION] - first off, xp to both of you for a really interesting and civil discussion this last 20 posts or so.

And then, a question: am I reading both of you correctly, when you're talking about how easy/hard it is/was to change or kitbash 4e, that it's relatively easy to drop things out you don't like but much harder to add things in you do like?

For example, hit points and effects - if I'm reading you right you'll both say it would be way easier to drop or ignore the 'bloodied' mechanic than it would be to introduce a wound-vitality or body-fatigue system.

Just curious...

Lanefan


----------



## Tony Vargas

Lanefan said:


> And then, a question: am I reading both of you correctly, when you're talking about how easy/hard it is/was to change or kitbash 4e, that it's relatively easy to drop things out you don't like but much harder to add things in you do like?



 Yes.  It's easier to drop elements - ban a class or source or race or not use magic items - than to add them (though monsters were particularly easy to re-skin or create), but that's really broadly true, it's always easier to pick what you want than to create it from scratch!  Since most options in 4e were reasonably balanced, dropping or re-skinning some for flavor/theme/whatever was relatively painless, while creating a new one, you'd feel obliged to make it as balanced as the existing options, which was a fairly high bar by D&D standards. Creating a full class, with the attendant Paths, features, and most of all, scores of powers, for instance, was a daunting undertaking - one, in fact that MM never undertook from Essentials on.

My personal reaction was, well - kitbashing a balanced system is like trying to keep your jenga tower from falling, while kitbashing an already-broken one is, well, everything's already fallen over, stack it up however you like.  When you might be tempted (oh, I'm going to run steampunk, let's see if I can kit-bash something from 4e...) I often found that re-skinning, alone, covered it.  Because all those little italic text blocks on every power (and thus every spell, item, etc) could just be changed willy-nilly without impacting mechanics, re-skinning was just very easy compared to re-designing rules.



> For example, hit points and effects - if I'm reading you right you'll both say it would be way easier to drop or ignore the 'bloodied' mechanic than it would be to introduce a wound-vitality or body-fatigue system.



Oddly, it'd've been pretty easy to re-skin the disease track to add lasting wounds & complications to the game.  I'm not sure what would be accomplished by dropping 'bloodied' - it's just a keyword that means "1/2 hps," in essence, if you dropped it, anything that keyed off bloodied would just say "... reduced to half it's maximum hps..." instead of "...bloodied..." 
(...just like 5e, actually)

There were very few commonly-used, or even commonly-discussed-hypothetical variants for 4e, but one I recall was to increase the time it took to recover surges (like 1 surge/long rest, say), and remove overnight healing, so you always used surges to heal, and could run out of surges over a longer time frame than the usual day.  I suppose that's adding (tweaking, really), something a bit like wounds-vitality, and it was pretty straightforward to do, and would only have impacted pacing, something 4e was fairly robust to, anyway.


----------



## Jay Verkuilen

Tony Vargas said:


> It's like any signal, encoding and decoding both matter.  Game designers should try to model the genre & the setting & make a good, functional game all three.  We should cut them some slack, and make the effort of imagination to accommodate near (or not so near) misses - the community has not been too consistent with that.




I'm willing to cut slack of course, but IMO these are pretty core mechanics to the game and were reasonably big misses. As I said, if one is going down the modern game route, I dislike mechanics that don't reinforce a character's theme and also dislike hard limits that don't feel like they grow with the caracter. The fact that they didn't put in any alternatives in the DMG to these two rules means to me they didn't think too much about them. 

All that said, number issues (e.g., the messed up math in saves) bug me more. 




> But it's maaaaagic!
> 
> _...what? nobody remembers Doug Henning?_




I remember Doug Henning but obviously didn't recall it was one of his lines!


----------



## Jay Verkuilen

Lanefan said:


> @_*Tony Vargas*_ - @_*Jay Verkuilen*_ - first off, xp to both of you for a really interesting and civil discussion this last 20 posts or so.




Thanks. 



> And then, a question: am I reading both of you correctly, when you're talking about how easy/hard it is/was to change or kitbash 4e, that it's relatively easy to drop things out you don't like but much harder to add things in you do like?




Yes, I think that's basically correct. If you want to rule out particular classes or power sources, for instance, that's not super difficult. 



> For example, hit points and effects - if I'm reading you right you'll both say it would be way easier to drop or ignore the 'bloodied' mechanic than it would be to introduce a wound-vitality or body-fatigue system.




Bloodied isn't really a big deal in general, though there were some monsters that had things that triggered and there were a few powers that got worse at bloodied. 

A wounds-vitality system would be more challenging but the general idea is that in that circumstance you can't come back really easily. I think the way to do that would be to have no mundane healing overnight and require the use of surges to heal. If you want a 5E version of that sort of thing, look at Cubicle 7's _Adventures in Middle Earth_, where during the course of the standard adventure you can only take Short Rests, not Long.


----------



## pemerton

Jay Verkuilen said:


> The "milestone" daily item use limit was... ugh. I know this is so last week, but that was one of the worst examples of a gamist/dissociated/whatever you want to call it I've literally ever seen.



As far as the mechanics-to-fiction correltion is concerned, I don't see that this is any different from attunement in 5e. The idea that a person has a certain amount of "inner power", without which the powerful magic is just a lump of metal in his/her hand, doesn't seem too far-fetched to me. (And if you don't like it, you can just drop it as you would attunement. What's going to happen? It's not as if 4e item daily powers are super-strong, and anyway most of those who would want to make this sort of change aren't so worried about balance.)

As far as inherent bonuses go, they're hardly a cunning thing! The DMG2 was the first book to mention them (not Dark Sun, as some posters have suggested in this and other threads), but I think I first saw them suggested on these boards about 5 minutes after the PHB came out!


----------



## billd91

Jay Verkuilen said:


> I remember Doug Henning but obviously didn't recall it was one of his lines!




I  remember, "Anything is possible in the world of magic and illuuuuuusion. Thank yeeeeeewwwwww."


----------



## Tony Vargas

pemerton said:


> As far as the mechanics-to-fiction correltion is concerned, I don't see that this is any different from attunement in 5e. The idea that a person has a certain amount of "inner power", without which the powerful magic is just a lump of metal in his/her hand, doesn't seem too far-fetched to me.



 Neither did Jay, he doesn't like 5e attunement, either.


> (And if you don't like it, you can just drop it as you would attunement. What's going to happen? It's not as if 4e item daily powers are super-strong, and anyway most of those who would want to make this sort of change aren't so worried about balance.)



 Optimizers could load up on low level item dailies, seems the obvious potential issue.


> As far as inherent bonuses go, they're hardly a cunning thing! The DMG2 was the first book to mention them (not Dark Sun, as some posters have suggested in this and other threads), but I think I first saw them suggested on these boards about 5 minutes after the PHB came out!



 I know they were used that way in 3e, too, but have never found the reference...


----------



## Jay Verkuilen

Tony Vargas said:


> Yes.  It's easier to drop elements - ban a class or source or race or not use magic items - than to add them (though monsters were particularly easy to re-skin or create), but that's really broadly true, it's always easier to pick what you want than to create it from scratch!  Since most options in 4e were reasonably balanced, dropping or re-skinning some for flavor/theme/whatever was relatively painless, while creating a new one, you'd feel obliged to make it as balanced as the existing options, which was a fairly high bar by D&D standards.




Yeah, that's pretty much it. I often didn't like the choices that WotC made, but felt that changing them was difficult because of how well-constructed things were. It was like a very well-built house with an interior layout I don't want, I guess. 




> When you might be tempted (oh, I'm going to run steampunk, let's see if I can kit-bash something from 4e...) I often found that re-skinning, alone, covered it.  Because all those little italic text blocks on every power (and thus every spell, item, etc) could just be changed willy-nilly without impacting mechanics, re-skinning was just very easy compared to re-designing rules.




Yeah, reskinning definitely went a long way all the way back in prior editions and it's still useful so I definitely think that's worthwhile. My general reason for wanting to do more was to realize a particular vision of some sort. In a highly defined system like 4E this was difficult. Combined with the general need for the CB, I felt it simply wasn't possible for the games I would have been able to run.


----------



## Jay Verkuilen

pemerton said:


> As far as the mechanics-to-fiction correltion is concerned, I don't see that this is any different from attunement in 5e. The idea that a person has a certain amount of "inner power", without which the powerful magic is just a lump of metal in his/her hand, doesn't seem too far-fetched to me.




I don't see how going through a few encounters builds up a charge to make your magic item work better. I guess I'd like at least a fig leaf over my game balancer done to try to encourage longer "work days". 

I don't like the way 5E attunement is implemented, as I've said, but the notion of having some limited amount of attention to master makes sense to me. My issue is that WotC just decided that the number is three and three is the number, hard stop, meaning that things like Arcana, feats, class, or ability scores play no role in it and that items don't have varying difficulties to attune. 




> As far as inherent bonuses go, they're hardly a cunning thing! The DMG2 was the first book to mention them (not Dark Sun, as some posters have suggested in this and other threads), but I think I first saw them suggested on these boards about 5 minutes after the PHB came out!




I wasn't on these boards then though I'm sure that clever folks did figure that out.


----------



## Tony Vargas

Jay Verkuilen said:


> .
> Yeah, reskinning definitely went a long way all the way back in prior editions and it's still useful so I definitely think that's worthwhile. My general reason for wanting to do more was to realize a particular vision of some sort. In a highly defined system like 4E this was difficult. Combined with the general need for the CB, I felt it simply wasn't possible for the games I would have been able to run.



 While 'skin' comes to us from videogames, the idea in RPGs goes way back, in paleo-D&D as a designer/DM tool: the familiar phrase 'counts as,' in rulebooks & modules, for instance.  In 3e, finally, extended to players being able to describe the appearance of their characters and gear - so you didn't have to wait for some rule to say what an way if counted as, you could take a rapier and describe it as such.   4e, as above took it further than any other ed...

...but the ultimate use of re-skinning in an RPG long antedates the term:  Champions! 'special effects,' c1981.


----------



## Legatus Legionis

.


----------



## pemerton

Tony Vargas said:


> Optimizers could load up on low level item dailies, seems the obvious potential issue.



But if the table in question doesn't care about "balance", then what's the problem?


----------



## Jhaelen

pemerton said:


> You're the first person I've heard say that designing monstersin 4e is hard.



Well, I think it's not easy to design good solo monsters in 4e. Also, presumably, it's hard to design challenging epic monsters.
But run-of-the-mill monsters up to mid-paragon tier? easy!


----------



## Tony Vargas

Jhaelen said:


> Well, I think it's not easy to design good solo monsters in 4e. Also, presumably, it's hard to design challenging epic monsters.



 It certainly must've been hard for Heinsoo & company to design good solo monsters, since it took them until MM3 to get it right.  But, now that it's been done, and we see what's needed, it's pretty easy.  Epic monsters aren't hard to design, either, by the numbers.   Epic PCs do start to approach the sheer number of options and game-warping abilities that casters tend to get in the low double-digits in other eds (though nothing like 3.x polymorph shenanigans or scry/buff/teleport is ever enabled in 4e, even at 30th), so that's not a big problem, either.   But, epic encounters, epic challenges, and especially Epic feel take some thought.  The danger with a perfectly useable/challenging epic encounter is that it can end up feeling no different from a Paragon encounter, just with bigger numbers (before the DMG2, when Paragon was still a bit fuzzy, a one-off epic game could feel much like Heroic, but with bigger numbers!).  So you're kinda on your own when designing epic challenges to actually feel Epic.... 

....y'know, the way you've been with designing any challenges at all in every other edition.  ;P




pemerton said:


> But if the table in question doesn't care about "balance", then what's the problem?



 Well, no problem with dropping 4e item-daily limits, since they wouldn't be playing 4e.  But, there could be similar problems with dropping attunement, just not so structural as introduced by 3.x/4e make/buy.  You wouldn't have to worry about PCs buying or cheaply making a bunch of low-level items that would otherwise have been limited by attunement, but you might have issues with one character retaining too many items, or with the PCs retaining items that were intended to be 'replaced' or the like.  It'd just be the DM throwing a tool away, really.  If you want to make sure an item gets to a given character, and the other character who might be able to use it is full up on attunement, you can make it an attuned item, and it won't be as obvious (or effect, but still, sometimes subtlety is worth it) as just making it only useable by the target PC...


----------



## Jay Verkuilen

pemerton said:


> But if the table in question doesn't care about "balance", then what's the problem?




There are degrees of caring about something like game balance. I care about it, but not to a dramatic degree that someone who plays a lot of organized play would. 

IMO the action economy does a much better job of balancing than many people give credit for. The main things that need _lots_ of care are things that break the action economy.


----------



## Jay Verkuilen

Tony Vargas said:


> It certainly must've been hard for Heinsoo & company to design good solo monsters, since it took them until MM3 to get it right.  But, now that it's been done, and we see what's needed, it's pretty easy.




I don't know about 4E---by the late game they were a good bit better, though early on they were often punching bags---but I think 5E solo monsters could use some work. For instance, one thing WotC tends to like is to jack save DCs up through the roof. This isn't actually a good way to make a combat work. 




> You wouldn't have to worry about PCs buying or cheaply making a bunch of low-level items that would otherwise have been limited by attunement, but you might have issues with one character retaining too many items, or with the PCs retaining items that were intended to be 'replaced' or the like.  It'd just be the DM throwing a tool away, really.




One substantial *cost* of attunement as it is currently written is that it frequently means that an item handed out gets a reaction of "meh" because nobody can use it without giving up something else.


----------



## Tony Vargas

Jay Verkuilen said:


> I don't know about 4E but I think 5E solo monsters could use some work. For instance, one thing WotC tends to like is to jack save DCs up through the roof. This isn't actually a good way to make a combat work.



 Legendary monsters have some pretty cool stuff, really, that learned from the difficulties 4e had with solos - legendary actions, most obviously.  

I agree that Legendary resistance may not always cut it, though.



> One substantial *cost* of attunement as it is currently written is that it frequently means that an item handed out gets a reaction of "meh" because nobody can use it without giving up something else.



 That shouldn't be a 'meh' - 4e got 'meh' for items all the time, because they just didn't do much, 5e items are back in a big way in that sense, they can be as character-re-defining and game-'breaking' as ever they were back in the day - not unless the party already has 3 XOMG AWESOME items attuned, /each/.  


I'd never give away that many items in 5e, myself.  Players should be happy to get one cool attuned item.  OK, maybe one each.  (Yeah, that means the attunement limitation is nearly meaningless when I'm running - so are a lot of other 'problems,' like GWM/SS or Sorlocks...)


----------



## Jay Verkuilen

Tony Vargas said:


> Legendary monsters have some pretty cool stuff, really, that learned from the difficulties 4e had with solos - legendary actions, most obviously.
> 
> I agree that Legendary resistance may not always cut it, though.




I think the idea is OK but there are details that aren't so great. It doesn't scale well. IMO one way would be for there to be a Legendary action after each PC's turn with many of them being things like "make a saving throw roll now" or "recover X hit points" where X is a non-trivial amount. That would mean that a smaller party wouldn't get totally hammered by many Legendary actions and a larger party would be able to skate by and simply overwhelm the creature by exhausting Legendary resistance. 




> That shouldn't be a 'meh' - 4e got 'meh' for items all the time, because they just didn't do much, 5e items are back in a big way in that sense, they can be as character-re-defining and game-'breaking' as ever they were back in the day - not unless the party already has 3 XOMG AWESOME items attuned, /each/.




Not all items that require attunement are that awesome. WotC tends to slap attunement on things that they decide are powerful for the level at which you are expected to acquire them, but such items often don't remain amazing at higher levels. But they're just useful enough you often have to go through a tradeoff calculation as to whether they're still worth keeping. 

I've seen it happen pretty often that the DM hands out some item nobody can use or wants to. In one game, the DM handed out a Moonblade which we recovered after killing a pretty nasty black dragon and literally nobody in the party could make effective use it. Yes, that was bad planning, but it's also emblematic of how too many balancing restrictions get in the way. (What he should have done was alter the item to be something we could actually benefit from because it was something plot-important.) 



> I'd never give away that many items in 5e, myself.  Players should be happy to get one cool attuned item.  OK, maybe one each.  (Yeah, that means the attunement limitation is nearly meaningless when I'm running - so are a lot of other 'problems,' like GWM/SS or Sorlocks...)




I don't hand out tons, but magic geegaws were always part of the game and part of the fun. I'd like people to be able to make use of what they get without going through a bunch of attunement math, short resting to attune and then reattune, and not just go "meh." 

IMO there are ways to make items cool by having them grow, for instance, or do something without attunement and do more with it, which makes it more tempting. Or have items have some variable cost for attunement rather than just being an all or nothing thing. Like a lot of things, WotC opted for simplistic and missed out on a lot of possibilities. 

For example, here's an item of my own design which illustrates the general idea of "attunement to get something extra":

_*Ysviden's Rifle* (Very Rare, Attunement: Special)

The gith pirates making up the Brotherhood of the Leviathan founded by the legendary Admiral Timerish slowly mine the star leviathan corpse they use as an anchorage for the components needed to make smoke powder. As such, they have developed firearms and explosives to a high art. Weapons such as Ysviden's Rifle exhibit the pinnacle of their manufacture using a combination of magic and clockwork. This rifle is an example of the highest reaches of their gunsmithing art. It was made for the githyanki assassin Ysviden, the lover of Captain Sitirthra, who later became a vampire. She slew many using this weapon. It is a masterfully crafted double-barreled rifle with a complex clockwork sight. As a weapon it must be loaded with smoke powder and bullets as usual for smokepowder weapons, and has a range of 90/300. It hits with such force and precision as to inflict D12 force damage. Its full potential is realized only in the hands of a wielder who has the Sharpshooter feat and attunes to the weapon. As an action, the wielder can aim at a target using the clockwork sight, gaining advantage __and a doubled critical range __on the first shot taken against the target.

_And another example of avoiding attunement by requiring a cost. 
_
*Figurine of Wondrous Power: Sly the Xorn *(Very Rare)

This small figurine of a three legged, three armed barrel-shaped creature made of gold with three small ruby eyes and a gaping maw where a head would be. Unlike most Figurines, it can be summoned once per long rest. Summoning it requires an action, during which point 50 gold worth of precious metals or gems must be sacrificed, and remains for an hour. It can be dismissed as an action. It, will, however, make apparent that it can be bribed with additional precious metals or gems to act in its summoner's favor. While it only speaks Terran, it is intelligent enough to understand a bribe in any language or even no language at all. When it is activated, its summoner should make a Persuasion check (DC 20), with success meaning that it will engage in tasks that are favorable to the summoner. __It is typically neutral towards its summoner unless the summoner has a clear affinity towards Elemental Air, in which case it will be hostile (+5 DC on Persuasion), or Elemental Earth, in which case it will be positively disposed (-5 DC). __A bribe worth at least 250 gold of precious metals or gems grants the summoner advantage on this roll. Failure by more than 5 indicates that it will attempt to steal precious metals and flee or otherwise cause problems for its summoner. It does not mind fighting for the summoner and will also scout through stone, excavate, etc. However, if it is slain it cannot be summoned again for a week. It is destroyed if it is slain by lightning or thunder damage or an air elemental. _


----------



## Tony Vargas

Jay Verkuilen said:


> Not all items that require attunement are that awesome.



 Just give them out in ascending order of awesome?  



> I've seen it happen pretty often that the DM hands out some item nobody can use or wants to. In one game, the DM handed out a Moonblade which we recovered after killing a pretty nasty black dragon and literally nobody in the party could make effective use it. Yes, that was bad planning



 Yeah it kinda is, if the point of the item is to be cool/useful to the party, and there are easy ways  to avoid it (as well as controversial ones like wish lists).  OTOH, finding an item no one in the party can use is also an indicator that the world does not revolve around them, for campaigns where that's party of the desired theme.



> IMO there are ways to make items cool by having them grow, for instance, or do something without attunement and do more with it, which makes it more tempting. Or have items have some variable cost for attunement rather than just being an all or nothing thing. Like a lot of things, WotC opted for simplistic and missed out on a lot of possibilities.



 I've used the idea of items getting better as the wielder levels going way back.  I never liked the volume of found items typical in D&D, or the way you get hand-me-down effects as better items are acquired.  5e's attitude can be a big improvement, that way (though I could've use inherent bonuses to keep things tuned properly in 3e or 4e, the /expectation/ set by the game is also important).


----------



## Jay Verkuilen

Tony Vargas said:


> Just give them out in ascending order of awesome?




I guess it depends on the order. I've often found that unless one really chokes back on items it always seems that the three item cap is there, waiting. Of course in a home game we could simply ignore it, but I do think it serves a useful purpose and the table politics of our game is rather anti-house rule. I wish WotC had come up with a better cost function. 




> Yeah it kinda is, if the point of the item is to be cool/useful to the party, and there are easy ways  to avoid it (as well as controversial ones like wish lists).




Ugh... wish lists. Talk about an idea that, in a small way, isn't bad but when taken to the extreme it was in 4E was crass gamist crap, IMO.  




> OTOH, finding an item no one in the party can use is also an indicator that the world does not revolve around them, for campaigns where that's party of the desired theme.




Well sure, but it really wasn't the theme and I'd not want that to be something nearly so legendary as a Moonblade. 




> I've used the idea of items getting better as the wielder levels going way back.  I never liked the volume of found items typical in D&D, or the way you get hand-me-down effects as better items are acquired.  5e's attitude can be a big improvement, that way (though I could've use inherent bonuses to keep things tuned properly in 3e or 4e, the /expectation/ set by the game is also important).




Expectations are indeed important, which is one reason I found 3.X and 4E quite frustrating on the item front, albeit for different ways. In both cases they got factored into the math.


----------



## Tony Vargas

Jay Verkuilen said:


> I guess it depends on the order. I've often found that unless one really chokes back on items it always seems that the three item cap is there, waiting. Of course in a home game we could simply ignore it, but I do think it serves a useful purpose and the table politics of our game is rather anti-house rule.



 Ouch.  Anti-house-rule might as well be anti-5e.  You're really not getting the most out of it if you're trying to stick to some kind of half-imagined 'RAW.'  Players need to trust the DM to make good rulings for 5e to work, it's 1e's true heir, in that sense.



> Ugh... wish lists. Talk about an idea that, in a small way, isn't bad but when taken to the extreme it was in 4E was crass gamist crap, IMO.



 Calling a game "gamist" shouldn't be an insult - it's a sign of how toxic the edition war was to our community that it's become so.

But, wish lists were not taken to an extreme, at all, in 4e, actually.  They were a suggested mechanism the DM could use, or not, as he saw fit.  And though 4e had make/buy, you sold at 20%, so if the DM didn't give you the item you wanted, you'd have quite the job saving up enough for it...

But, as with 3.x, wealth/level was a pretty serious thing, so you would, eventually, be able to get it with pocket change.

I do like 5e's take:  not assuming items in the baseline, at all.  No wealth/level.  No make/buy.   Players should have not only no wish list but no expectation of any items, at all - so you're free to give out only so many items as keep the campaign interesting. 

Arguably you don't "need" attunment if you're never going to give out a third magic item, ever, but, IDK, it's a nice idea, conceptually, as well as acting to limit anyone one character using too many items. 



> Expectations are indeed important, which is one reason I found 3.X and 4E quite frustrating on the item front, albeit for different ways. In both cases they got factored into the math.



 Nod.  Wealth/level & make/buy seemed like good ideas, but they turned items into game-wrecking CharOp resources.  4e 'fixed' that by balancing items and making them subordinate to other build resources (Class, Paths, Destinies, etc), about on par with feats, really - all of which can be summed up as "Oh, a magic item? meh."

If you're going to have magic items that feel 'really magical' like back in the day, then the no-item expectation and attunement limitations of 5e are not a bad idea, at all.


----------



## Jay Verkuilen

Tony Vargas said:


> Ouch.  Anti-house-rule might as well be anti-5e.  You're really not getting the most out of it if you're trying to stick to some kind of half-imagined 'RAW.'  Players need to trust the DM to make good rulings for 5e to work, it's 1e's true heir, in that sense.




We have a few house rules (e.g., Counterspell and Dispel Magic are the same spell, crits do max damage plus dice) but for the most part we don't have them. It's more than I'd do myself---as you know I'm quite the tinkerer---but some of the folks I play with are wary of house rules. That doesn't mean DMs don't make rulings, but we tend to stick fairly closely to the way things are written in the book. Every group has its norms to keep peace at the table. 




> Calling a game "gamist" shouldn't be an insult - it's a sign of how toxic the edition war was to our community that it's become so.




IMO _crassly gamist_ is something where the game mechanic is out front and center. It's a mechanic that may well _work_ but it's _only_ a mechanic and doesn't have any kind of integration with the fiction. IMO a clever but unintegrated mechanic shouldn't be how the game runs all the time, though of course all games will have some rules like this, e.g., spell slots and the action economy being two examples. I clearly I have a lower tolerance for this than you do so for me, insofar as it is possible, things that are crassly gamist should be used sparingly. 




> But, wish lists were not taken to an extreme, at all, in 4e, actually.  They were a suggested mechanism the DM could use, or not, as he saw fit.  And though 4e had make/buy, you sold at 20%, so if the DM didn't give you the item you wanted, you'd have quite the job saving up enough for it...




I guess I never really encountered them put so boldly and baldly before 4E, so that's why I felt they were taken to an extreme. Of course you could run without them, but like much of 4E I felt they were an example of really putting the rules front and center. Given the sheer number of items in 4E, having the DM fish through the lists for something interesting to a player was a _lot_ of work. So I _understand_ the wish list, but feel that it's an example of the deleterious effect of too many fairly humdrum options. 



> I do like 5e's take:  not assuming items in the baseline, at all.  No wealth/level.  No make/buy.   Players should have not only no wish list but no expectation of any items, at all - so you're free to give out only so many items as keep the campaign interesting.




This is an area where I like _some_ baseline, but not a ton. 3.X and 4E being an example of a ton. 



> Arguably you don't "need" attunment if you're never going to give out a third magic item, ever, but, IDK, it's a nice idea, conceptually, as well as acting to limit anyone one character using too many items.




I don't mind it conceptually. I just feel that it's an example of a seriously missed opportunity where something that could have been flavorful and interesting was instead left crassly gamist (as I defined it above). 



> Nod.  Wealth/level & make/buy seemed like good ideas, but they turned items into game-wrecking CharOp resources.




They certainly can, though I do actually like a certain amount of make/buy. For instance, questing for magical ingredients can be a good source of side adventures so having some suggested systems helps the DM design such adventures. These are nice because they provide sources of adventures that aren't just "save the world" or pure form murder hoboing. They can be useful side treks, for instance.   



> 4e 'fixed' that by balancing items and making them subordinate to other build resources (Class, Paths, Destinies, etc), about on par with feats, really - all of which can be summed up as "Oh, a magic item? meh."




Yeah, 4E definitely made magic items feel pretty humdrum. They walked that back a bit with some of the later ones being cooler, but for the most part I found them to be fairly boring. 



> If you're going to have magic items that feel 'really magical' like back in the day, then the no-item expectation and attunement limitations of 5e are not a bad idea, at all.



As inconsistent as it was, 1E assumed some item accumulation. For instance, monsters that required silver and eventually increasingly magical weapons to hit appeared as one leveled. But as I said, I don't think attunement itself is a bad idea. It's a decent idea that's poorly executed. Ditto concentration.


----------



## Sadras

Jay Verkuilen said:


> We have a few house rules (e.g., Counterspell and Dispel Magic are the same spell, crits do max damage plus dice) but for the most part we don't have them.




So clerics at your table may Counterspell?


----------



## Jay Verkuilen

Sadras said:


> So clerics at your table may Counterspell?




I guess so! It hasn't been some massive boost, mind you, and enemy casters get it too.


----------



## Tony Vargas

Jay Verkuilen said:


> IMO _crassly gamist_ is something where the game mechanic is out front and center. It's a mechanic that may well _work_ but it's _only_ a mechanic and doesn't have any kind of integration with the fiction.



 You can spin it that way as hard as you like, you're still talking about a mechanic, and likely a game, that is probably strictly superior, as such.  

"Integration with the fiction," for instance, is very much a function of the imagination and buy-in of the players (and/or GM, depending on where the game puts it's emphasis). In 5e, for instance, it'd be mainly on the DM's shoulders to make, say Second Wind make sense 'within the fiction,' while in 4e it was up to the player to describe whatever power he was using at the moment in a way that worked for his in-fiction conception of his character.



> IMO a clever but unintegrated mechanic shouldn't be how the game runs all the time, though of course all games will have some rules like this, e.g., spell slots and the action economy being two examples. I clearly I have a lower tolerance for this than you do so for me, insofar as it is possible, things that are crassly gamist should be used sparingly.



 Frankly, I question the validity of the concept, itself.  RPGs are necesarily very abstract - unless you want to go into some steam tunnels with a sword and get yourself killed, anyway - that abstraction creates a disconnect between what you're doing at the table (including mechanics) and what you're imagining for the character.  Resolving that disconnect is ultimately on you, because no game can close it.  



> I guess I never really encountered them put so boldly and baldly before 4E, so that's why I felt they were taken to an extreme. Of course you could run without them, but like much of 4E I felt they were an example of really putting the rules front and center.



 Wish lists were not part of the rules, at all.  They were a suggestion to the DM, one way of distributing magic items.  Treasure parcels were part of those suggestions, too, and were just more of the same wealth/level guides as 3.x, FWIW.



> I don't mind it conceptually. I just feel that it's an example of a seriously missed opportunity where something that could have been flavorful and interesting was instead left crassly gamist (as I defined it above).



 Attunement just seems, to me, like another way in which magic is made 'special.'  Maybe it could have been implemented better (like PF2 'resonance?' or like 13A magic item personalities & quirks), but I'm glad it was included in 5e.



> They certainly can, though I do actually like a certain amount of make/buy. For instance, questing for magical ingredients can be a good source of side adventures so having some suggested systems helps the DM design such adventures



 5e's very sketchy item-creation guidelines allow for that.



> As inconsistent as it was, 1E assumed some item accumulation. For instance, monsters that required silver and eventually increasingly magical weapons to hit appeared as one leveled. But as I said, I don't think attunement itself is a bad idea. It's a decent idea that's poorly executed. Ditto concentration.



It did.  1e assumed item accumulatoin for balance, in fact, and weighted its random-treasure tables to get there.  You were far more likely to get magical weapons than rod/staff/wands and the best/most-common magical weapons were (long) swords, meant mainly for the fighter who, without some powerful/distinctive items was bland, and out of the lowest levels, under-performing.



Sadras said:


> So clerics at your table may Counterspell?



 Sounds like a reasonable thing for them to be able to do.  "Your dark magic will avail you naught against my Faith!"


----------



## pemerton

Jay Verkuilen said:


> In one game, the DM handed out a Moonblade which we recovered after killing a pretty nasty black dragon and literally nobody in the party could make effective use it. Yes, that was bad planning, but it's also emblematic of how too many balancing restrictions get in the way. (What he should have done was alter the item to be something we could actually benefit from because it was something plot-important.)





Jay Verkuilen said:


> Ugh... wish lists. Talk about an idea that, in a small way, isn't bad but when taken to the extreme it was in 4E was crass gamist crap, IMO.



In my opinion and experience, the idea that the GM is meant to magically know what is "good for the game", but without ever talking to the players about what the shared imagined content of the game might be, leads to the worst sort of RPGing possible.


----------



## Sadras

Tony Vargas said:


> Sounds like a reasonable thing for them to be able to do.  "Your dark magic will avail you naught against my Faith!"




I imagine Glantrian wizards would certainly protest about that 

I've always liked Comprehend Languages in the Cleric's list of spells (as per 3.x)


----------



## Lanefan

pemerton said:


> In my opinion and experience, the idea that the GM is meant to magically know what is "good for the game", but without ever talking to the players about what the shared imagined content of the game might be, leads to the worst sort of RPGing possible.



Part of the GM's role is that of - for lack of a better term - steward of her game; and as such it falls into her domain to at least aspire to know what is good for it.  Trial, error and time will tell whether such aspiration is realized or not, with the obvious (though, it seems, sometimes forgotten) proviso that nobody is perfect.

And it falls to the player to have trust in that stewardship until and unless trial, error and time proves said trust misplaced; at which point it's time to find a new GM.

Lan-"steward until the rightful king should appear"-efan


----------



## pemerton

Heaven forfend that a GM should avoid placing a "meh" magic item by finding out directly what sorts of magic items might excite his/her players!


----------



## Bedrockgames

pemerton said:


> In my opinion and experience, the idea that the GM is meant to magically know what is "good for the game", but without ever talking to the players about what the shared imagined content of the game might be, leads to the worst sort of RPGing possible.




When you frame it as a magic ability, rather than what it really is (intuition and empathy), it sounds pretty ridiculous. Look, if you like wish lists, that is great, go to town. A lot of us didn't enjoy them (on either side fo the screen). As a player, I didn't like the experience of the world handing me all this stuff so that my character fit some kind of build or arc I had in mind. I much prefer to discover that over time through exploration of the world and the stuff the GM decides to throw at us. Sometimes that meant you got 'meh' items. Sometimes it meant you got great items. Sometimes it meant taking 'meh' and turning it into something cool. 

From the GM and player side, I just strongly disliked the wishlist approach to play. When the game started becoming geared toward builds, it sucked a lot of fun from the game for me. 

I'd much rather be in a game where we trust the GM to surprise us with stuff.


----------



## Tony Vargas

pemerton said:


> In my opinion and experience, the idea that the GM is meant to magically know what is "good for the game", but without ever talking to the players about what the shared imagined content of the game might be



 But, I thought magical abilities got a free pass and were always acceptable explanations for anything?  

Seriously, though, there is a style of DMing (and I say D rather than G for the obvious reason), in which maintaining a sense of mystery on the player side of the screen is paramont.  What's best for the game in that style is something the DM must divine without collaborating (directly or openly) with the players.  He can't just ask "what kind of game do you want" "what kind of enemies are you interested in"  "what kind of magic item best fits your character" or anything like that.  He shouldn't even take too-obvious hints.  Because any sense on the player side that the DM has 'changed' his world (even though he's most likely making it up as he goes along so there's nothing to change) to cater to the PCs(players) breaks that sense of mystery and undermines the style.  



> leads to the worst sort of RPGing possible



And just because I can't think of an example of a worse sort of RPGing off the top of my head doesn't mean that it's the worst sort possible....  
...I'm sure there's something.


----------



## Tony Vargas

Bedrockgames said:


> From the GM and player side, I just strongly disliked the wishlist approach to play.
> I'd much rather be in a game where we trust the GM to surprise us with stuff.



 You totally know the style I'm talking about, above.



> When the game started becoming geared toward builds, it sucked a lot of fun from the game for me.



 OTOH, while I really appreciate the more DM-centric approach of 5e, I also quite enjoyed the 'geared towards builds' approach of 3.x ( as well as Hero, 4e, & many other non-D&D games out there).


----------



## R_Chance

pemerton said:


> Heaven forfend that a GM should avoid placing a "meh" magic item by finding out directly what sorts of magic items might excite his/her players!




Why do I hear the voice of a certain game show host when I read that?


----------



## pemerton

R_Chance said:


> Why do I hear the voice of a certain game show host when I read that?



Because only a Monty Haul game would have the PCs finding magic items that the players are keen to discover?

In a non-Monty Haul game, the only magic items will be Tridents of Fish Command and Potions of Delusion!


----------



## R_Chance

pemerton said:


> Because only a Monty Haul game would have the PCs finding magic items that the players are keen to discover?
> 
> In a non-Monty Haul game, the only magic items will be Tridents of Fish Command and Potions of Delusion!




No, but having them hand you a wish list and giving it to them pretty much is. You said "discover". If they already know what they are getting it's not discovery. It's just giving them what they want for their build. It's one think if the story says they need to find "X" item to counter the big bad. It's another to fill out a shopping list. That, and crafting items to fill every slot is what drove me away from Pathfinder. 

Items do not need to be useless or totally situational either, but they should be relevant to the place discovered, the story, or a mystery (minor or major). Figuring out a use for an item or even finding someone who wants it to swap for another item is interesting. Questing to find a legendary item is interesting.  Just being handed the items is... not interesting. To me. All imho, of course.

*edit* Sorry if I'm getting snarky. I made the mistake of watching the news... I thought of eliminating this reply, but I think an apology is more honest.


----------



## pemerton

R_Chance said:


> You said "discover". If they already know what they are getting it's not discovery.



My keys are lost somewhere in my house. I search high and low, eventually _discovering them_ behind the couch.

Things can be discovered that were expected to be found _somewhere_, at _some time_.



R_Chance said:


> It's just giving them what they want for their build. It's one think if the story says they need to find "X" item to counter the big bad. It's another to fill out a shopping list.



Who decided on "the story"? The GM?

What if the player is driving the story? What if the player's conception of his/her character is central to play?

Why is a _need_ to find "X" more exciting when the GM decided who the "big bad" would be rather than the player?



R_Chance said:


> Items do not need to be useless or totally situational either, but they should be relevant to the place discovered, the story, or a mystery (minor or major).
> 
> <snip>
> 
> Questing to find a legendary item is interesting.  Just being handed the items is... not interesting.



There is confusion here. Players don't quest to find items. They sit at tables writing things down, rolling dice, and saying stuff. Some of the stuff they say or write might be a desire that their PCs find certain items.

PCs find items, sometimes by questing for them, sometimes by happenstance. There is no contradiction between questing to find an item, and it appearing on a player wishlist. The earliest discussion I know of this is in Gygax's DMG (the "item" in question is a paladin's warhorse).


----------



## R_Chance

pemerton said:


> My keys are lost somewhere in my house. I search high and low, eventually _discovering them_ behind the couch.
> 
> Things can be discovered that were expected to be found _somewhere_, at _some time_.




You found your keys. That's not discovery 




pemerton said:


> Who decided on "the story"? The GM?
> 
> What if the player is driving the story? What if the player's conception of his/her character is central to play?




If the player has created the story then I'd ask why you need a DM? To administer the players story? I understand that players contribute to the world and story, but (imho) the DM has more input on that than any single player certainly. Ymmv. 

The games I've plaid in are not driven by one players conception of his or her character. What about everybody else? Did every one else say "we're all about them"? I understand that different characters will shine at different moments in a game, Each may have a storyline in which they are more important. But the rest have to be happy too.



pemerton said:


> Why is a _need_ to find "X" more exciting when the GM decided who the "big bad" would be rather than the player?




Mystery. A lack of perfect knowledge (for the players) and the need to discover what exactly is going on. Personally I enjoy watching them figure it out when I DM. I, and my players in short, find that exciting. Not so much (for the players) if they already know. Ymmv.




pemerton said:


> There is confusion here. Players don't quest to find items. They sit at tables writing things down, rolling dice, and saying stuff. Some of the stuff they say or write might be a desire that their PCs find certain items.
> 
> PCs find items, sometimes by questing for them, sometimes by happenstance. There is no contradiction between questing to find an item, and it appearing on a player wishlist. The earliest discussion I know of this is in Gygax's DMG (the "item" in question is a paladin's warhorse).




The PCs then. Hopefully the players imaginations extend beyond the table and dice. Gygax indicated the Paladin's horse could be the object of a quest if the DM desired in 1E iirc. In the original game the Paladin's horse was something that could be "obtained". He (the Paladin) could "choose to obtain a horse which was likewise gifted" (Greyhawk, page 9), there was no mention of how it was obtained. I don't have my 1E books near to hand (they are boxed up).

I suspect we play different types of games. We were all about exploration and discovery and that is still the style of game we play. That was more important than the characters in many ways. I suspect we are each happy with our own style. At least I hope we are 

*edit* Spelling, how you vex me...


----------



## Lanefan

pemerton said:


> My keys are lost somewhere in my house. I search high and low, eventually _discovering them_ behind the couch.
> 
> Things can be discovered that were expected to be found _somewhere_, at _some time_.



You find your keys, sure; but in process of looking you also discover an old photograph that you'd long thought destroyed had in fact slipped down behind the couch (thus, you find an unexpected thing of value to you).  Also while down there you find something else*, 'meh' to you but of possibly great value to someone else (equivalent to finding a magic item in game that you'll probably end up selling).

* - I'm having a tough time thinking of an example of such an item for this silly metaphor - Bob's leather jacket that he thought someone stole from your party last summer, maybe? 



> There is confusion here. Players don't quest to find items. They sit at tables writing things down, rolling dice, and saying stuff. Some of the stuff they say or write might be a desire that their PCs find certain items.
> 
> PCs find items, sometimes by questing for them, sometimes by happenstance. There is no contradiction between questing to find an item, and it appearing on a player wishlist. The earliest discussion I know of this is in Gygax's DMG (the "item" in question is a paladin's warhorse).



The paladin's warhorse is an example that - pun intended - keeps getting trotted out in discussions like this, but it's a bad one; and here's why:

With the pally's horse, the game rules insist that it must be found.  The whole quest thing is just a long-form version of having the thing magically appear next to the pally when she wakes up one morning - you quest, you find the horse...even if you don't want a flippin' horse to begin with!

A wishlist skips the quest part.  You just keep playing, no matter what you're doing in the game world, and the items will eventually fall into your (PC's) lap.  When they do, you'll know what they are and what they do...no mystery there, either.

A conventional item quest skips the auto-success part.  It's just another adventure, with the usual attendant risks of failure or death or whatever. (and, IME, it's rare that the item in question is intended for the PCs to keep anyway - they're usually trying to find it for someone else).  Further, unlike a pally's horse where it's well-known what it is and does even before the quest beings, with a typical item quest the PCs don't know much about the item until they find it and can play with it a bit, so at least there's that bit of mystery.

Also, in a wishlist situation the DM can still put items out there that aren't on anyone's list which might prove of greater interest than the wished-for items anyway.

Lanefan


----------



## Shasarak

pemerton said:


> In a non-Monty Haul game, the only magic items will be Tridents of Fish Command and Potions of Delusion!




I wish.  More like a bent spoon and half an apple.

If you are lucky.


----------



## MichaelSomething

pemerton said:


> Heaven forfend that a GM should avoid placing a "meh" magic item by finding out directly what sorts of magic items might excite his/her players!




I once gave my party a Sustaining Spoon.  They almost started a riot in response...


----------



## Lanefan

MichaelSomething said:


> I once gave my party a Sustaining Spoon.  They almost started a riot in response...



Where I gave my party a plate of endless food not long ago and they loved it!

'Course, the party having 4 Hobbits in it might have skewed that a little...


----------



## Bedrockgames

Tony Vargas said:


> OTOH, while I really appreciate the more DM-centric approach of 5e, I also quite enjoyed the 'geared towards builds' approach of 3.x ( as well as Hero, 4e, & many other non-D&D games out there).




I was always quite torn over the whole build thing. On the one hand, simply because I ran 3E for so many years, and as a result, learned the ins and outs of builds, I came to appreciate it as a style of play in itself. For certain kinds of campaigns I found it worked well (I ran several 3E based wuxia campaigns for this reason). But on the other hand, it isn't what I usually look for in my core experience of D&D. When I think back to my experiences prior to that playing 1E and 2E, the build approach was such a different way of tackling the game and it led to an entirely different feel. I think there are two basic things I found different about it that changed things. The first is the books were much more written for the players rather than the GM and there was a baked in assumption that worked its way into the gaming culture over time, that if it was in the books, the players have access to it. Obviously this wasn't true across the board. But I encountered it a lot. And saw lots of instances where a campaign suddenly had to have strange monster-like races or dragon-like characters because there was a class, prestige class or race option for it. If you are more accustomed to the world being a coherent creation of the GM, that can actually be a little annoying. The other aspect was that in order to enjoy the game, you really had to know how to make a build and enjoy maximizing a given character's potential within the system. That isn't for everyone. In a group where folks all want that, it can work. In a group where people aren't interested in optimization, it can lead to lots of conflict and steer the game away from the stuff folks are interested in engaging.


----------



## Jay Verkuilen

pemerton said:


> In my opinion and experience, the idea that the GM is meant to magically know what is "good for the game", but without ever talking to the players about what the shared imagined content of the game might be, leads to the worst sort of RPGing possible.




Note that in what you quoted I said "in a small way". 

I don't have an in principle objection to the DM discussing things with the players off-line and things like items that seem to fit the PC are a good example of that, to some degree, but the player handing in a sheet with a long list of magic items... yeah, that's a bridge too far for me. Given the sheer number and general lack of distinctness of many 4E items, especially the ones in the early version of the game, wish lists or something like it were pretty much inevitable. I remember it as being one of the most tedious tasks as a player. 

One way to handle this IC, though, is to have some means to exchange/sell/make magic items. This means an unwanted item can be turned into something else. I get why people who fear the excesses of CharOp and RAW wielded like a weapon like the plague don't want exchange/sell/make, but one thing is does a good job of is keeping things in character. Wish lists, by contrast, are totally out of character.


----------



## pemerton

Lanefan said:


> A wishlist skips the quest part.  You just keep playing, no matter what you're doing in the game world, and the items will eventually fall into your (PC's) lap.  When they do, you'll know what they are and what they do...no mystery there, either.



Do you know this from our extensive experience of playing a game with wishlists?


----------



## pemerton

Jay Verkuilen said:


> One way to handle this IC, though, is to have some means to exchange/sell/make magic items. This means an unwanted item can be turned into something else. I get why people who fear the excesses of CharOp and RAW wielded like a weapon like the plague don't want exchange/sell/make, but one thing is does a good job of is keeping things in character. Wish lists, by contrast, are totally out of character.



A game in which PCs find fitting items may, at least in that respsect, resemble LotR.

A game in which the PCs reduce iems to residuum and/or trade them at the Sigil item mart resembles LotR not at a all!


----------



## Jay Verkuilen

Tony Vargas said:


> But, I thought magical abilities got a free pass and were always acceptable explanations for anything?




Heh, well it does _help_ insofar as things declared "magic" explicitly break the "rules" of mundane reality. 



> Seriously, though, there is a style of DMing (and I say D rather than G for the obvious reason), in which maintaining a sense of mystery on the player side of the screen is paramont.  What's best for the game in that style is something the DM must divine without collaborating (directly or openly) with the players.  He can't just ask "what kind of game do you want" "what kind of enemies are you interested in"  "what kind of magic item best fits your character" or anything like that.  He shouldn't even take too-obvious hints.  Because any sense on the player side that the DM has 'changed' his world (even though he's most likely making it up as he goes along so there's nothing to change) to cater to the PCs(players) breaks that sense of mystery and undermines the style.




I think you've got the intention somewhat wrong, my intention. I really want people to stay in character as much as possible. A sense of mystery is important for that. I will play with the fourth wall a bit, of course, recognizing that it's really a bunch of players sitting around a table/logged into a VTT, but I work pretty hard for it to be there and avoid breaking immersion. 

This means that games that have a _lot_ of things that break me out of that---lots of tedious arithmetic, bookkeeping, or chart consultation during the course of play would be examples---are problematic. If _every_ _turn_ I have to read the powers for important details, I'm constantly context-switching and not staying in the fiction. 

Same goes for DMing. I tend to keep track of player desires and the general direction they want their character to go in. I'll throw in opportunities for them of course, often based on conversations we might have had off-line. Players can also mention things they're looking for IC. Say, when entering a new town, the player might say "Hey, I'm interested in seeing if such-and-so merchant is here. I need to get some of that newfangled plate armor." and the bard's player says, "Sure, I'll ask around for you to see if I can get you a good deal." This happens IC. Maybe Ye Olde Towne doesn't have a good armorer... why is that? It might suggest there's an issue, or provide a direction to go. "Ye Olde Towne used to have an armorer, but Baron Sir Duke drove him out, so he moved". Of course, for something really mundane I won't waste table time on it. "I want to buy some standard adventuring gear." No need to keep track of it unless the feel of the game requires that to reinforce it. If I were playing "Fallout: The Low Level Years" then, yeah, buying rope is a problem. "Sourcing the table" gives the DM a ton of information and new directions; a skilled DM knows how to do it to keep the fiction going. 

You mentioned abstraction up-thread. I don't disagree that a TTRPG is abstract, but the more I'm having to fight with complicated rules (for whatever reason... badly written spells such as 3.X's _Dispel Magic_ to impeccably written and game-balanced powers that require getting the details really right, such as many 4E powers), the more I get pulled into thinking about these things. 

I'll make a close analogy: I've done a good bit of home musical recording. It's very hard to flip back and forth between "engineer" mindset, which is focused on getting a quality recording free of unwanted noise and "artist" mindset focused on getting a quality performance that hits all the notes right and evokes the desired emotion. This is why it's often helpful not to have to do the engineering when you just want to play. If the tools are really good at getting out of the way, it's _possible_ to handle both roles. If not, it's better to let someone else do part of it. 

Some scaffolding really helps both the player and DM. For example, one reason I like some item creation rules is that they save me from having to just make things up on the spot... "What goes into a healing potion?" "Uh... <scratches head, what did I say last time?>". As I said in a different post, I totally understand that WotC _fears_ the CharOP/RAW rules lawyer mindset and wants to support DMs trying to avoid that, but IMO their way of fighting it by not publishing anything in certain areas isn't the way I'd go about it and has ended up being one of the more frustrating aspects of 5E. 

There is, of course, a sweet spot that's different for every person: Enough of the right kinds of detail, but not too much. Insufficiently detailed mechanics become boring. So for me having rules that really support and work with keeping the game IC as much as possible is the thing. 

Based on your posts, I think you're more of the "it's a game" kind of person. 




> And just because I can't think of an example of a worse sort of RPGing off the top of my head doesn't mean that it's the worst sort possible....
> ...I'm sure there's something.




"Roll D20 for d*ck length...." Yes, I've actually heard that. I left.


----------



## Jay Verkuilen

pemerton said:


> A game in which PCs find fitting items may, at least in that respsect, resemble LotR.
> 
> A game in which the PCs reduce iems to residuum and/or trade them at the Sigil item mart resembles LotR not at a all!




I don't intend my game to look like LotR, so I don't really care about that---not sure why you think that's particularly important, at least to me.  

The Sigil Item Mart can be TONS of fun with many RP opportunities. It's an undertaking to get to Sigil for one. Once you're there you have to work to get access and make deals. For instance, if you're buying from The Friendly Fiend, well... he often wants payments in other than mundane coin. You may or may not be able to come to a deal for what you want to trade or obtain. So you can look for other options, but that may involve other unsavory deals or various quests to get in with different Factions. IMO it's one of the best ways to have a fairly player-directed campaign arc!

Similarly, residuum was a good idea. It's the universal magical reagent, but it's costly to sack an item to make it. Again, lots of RP opportunities: Ever read _Master of Five Magics_?


----------



## Tony Vargas

Jay Verkuilen said:


> I think you've got the intention somewhat wrong, my intention. I really want people to stay in character as much as possible. A sense of mystery is important for that. I will play with the fourth wall a bit, of course, recognizing that it's really a bunch of players sitting around a table/logged into a VTT, but I work pretty hard for it to be there and avoid breaking immersion.



 Nod.  You're saying that the sense of mystery is helpful in achieving the goal of immersion, I'm saying that a sense of immersion is helpful in achieving the goal of mystery (or maybe I should say 'uncertainty' or 'disocvery' or 'wonder').  Six of one, half-dozen of the other.   

The point is, you can't go letting players make a magic-item 'wish list' OOC, that the DM will even take into consideration.  They could, IC, learn about and decide to quest for specific items, of course.  



> This means that games that have a _lot_ of things that break me out of that---lots of tedious arithmetic, bookkeeping, or chart consultation during the course of play would be examples---are problematic.



And here's the problem I so often encounter when defending this style to someone who doesn't appreciate it, someone who does will come in with claims like this that won't make sense to the other side, at all.  We are talking about a minor/optional difference evinced by one ed of D&D, and you just ascribed an intractable level of the same issue kind of issue in _every edition of D&D_, especially the classic ones where this particular style arguably orginated and was used with the greatest enthusiasm.  
And that's going to seem like a blatant contradiction of any point I may have managed to make in explaining the issue with "wish listing" items...



> If _every_ _turn_ I have to read the powers for important details, I'm constantly context-switching and not staying in the fiction.



 Again, you're introducing a blatant contradiction:  compared to going through spells in any ed or the rules for maneuvers in 3.x/PF, parsing a power is fast & unintrusive.  



> You mentioned abstraction up-thread. I don't disagree that a TTRPG is abstract, but the more I'm having to fight with complicated rules (for whatever reason... badly written spells such as 3.X's _Dispel Magic_ to impeccably written and game-balanced powers that require getting the details really right, such as many 4E powers), the more I get pulled into thinking about these things.



 Funny thing is, you just game an example of a complicated vs a simple rule as if both were complicated.  Sure, the latter might have been comlicated for the designer to create in the context of the whole, more 'balanced,' game, but as far as understanding an resolving one power, it's about as simple as you can get without an even greater level of abstraction:  like 'roll hit,' 'roll damage.'



> For example, one reason I like some item creation rules is that they save me from having to just make things up on the spot... "What goes into a healing potion?" "Uh... <scratches head, what did I say last time?>".



 The problem with too-specific rules for item creation is that they can set you up with the same problems as a wish list.  If a healing potion requires treant sap or troll blood, for instance, those monsters had better be fairly common in your world if healing potions are going to be fairly common - what's more, if the players gain OOC knowledge of the rules-dictated ingredients, they can meta-game to manufacture opportunities to manufacture items.  
OTOH, if it's just Xgp of materials, you just need a basic economy set up to determine availability.  You can fill in the details of what the materials are for color to match your world.  And, yeah, if you're winging it, should maybe write it down - though magic is supposed to be pretty wonky...



> There is, of course, a sweet spot that's different for every person: Enough of the right kinds of detail, but not too much. Insufficiently detailed mechanics become boring. So for me having rules that really support and work with keeping the game IC as much as possible is the thing.



 Having had many of these discussion, I've reached the conclusion that there's no objective level or degree of abstraction or detail or whatever that is, however subjectively, a line that, once crossed, is too much.  Rather, it appears the issue with a given mechanic getting in the way of the style of play is subjective to the point of being entirely arbitrary, and if there is a consistent determinant, at all, it's long familiarity with and acceptance of working around the mechanic in question to get the desired feel from the game.

While that's not an invalid issue, trying to design a new game (or meaningfully improved version of an existing game) around it is futile.  It's, at it's least destructive, an unfortunate source of innertia in the hobby.  



> Based on your posts, I think you're more of the "it's a game" kind of person.



It's nothing to do with the kind of person I am, and I do often enjoy & run the style we're defending.  (I do also enjoy playing & running in others, as well, which is a source of consternation in these debates - I look like I'm 'waffling' or arguing both sides just to argue.)

It is just, in objective fact, that a TTRPG is an actual game.  No matter how avidly we may persue a style that tries to evoke a genre or model an imagined reality, the tools we are using to do so remain the rules & trappings (& inherrent limitations) of a game.  
That or we end up played by Tom Hanks in the movie adaptation.  ;P

Like I actually said, though, I appreciate that kind of style, which is why I often find myself defending it to pemerton &c.  I'm just not as convinced as some of my fellow adherents that a game must be mechanically lacking in order to facilitate it.  Hidden from the players in the old Gygaxian sense can certainly help, though.



> "Roll D20 for d*ck length...." Yes, I've actually heard that. I left.



 Once again, FATAL saves D&D from being the worst RPG of all time.  ;P

And, its rediculous:  if you're running an ocean-going adventure, you should know who big the dock is before the party tries to moor its boat.




Jay Verkuilen said:


> I don't intend my game to look like LotR, so I don't really care about that---not sure why you think that's particularly important, at least to me.



 I suppose LotR was just an example.  Residuum & magic-item economies won't resemble any other classic fantasy sub-genre, either.  It might harken to comic book supers or sci-fi, a bit, with Residuum taking the place of Marvel's Vibranium or Dune's Spice or whatever sort of unobtanium is smoothing over the throwaway details.  



> The Sigil Item Mart can be TONS of fun with many RP opportunities. It's an undertaking to get to Sigil for one. Once you're there you have to work to get access and make deals. For instance, if you're buying from The Friendly Fiend, well... he often wants payments in other than mundane coin. You may or may not be able to come to a deal for what you want to trade or obtain. So you can look for other options, but that may involve other unsavory deals or various quests to get in with different Factions. IMO it's one of the best ways to have a fairly player-directed campaign arc!



 Well, we can agree to disagree on that one.  



> Similarly, residuum was a good idea. It's the universal magical reagent, but it's costly to sack an item to make it. Again, lots of RP opportunities: Ever read _Master of Five Magics_?



 I quite liked it:  it had a very scientific, or at least practical, attitude towards magic and the workings of the five different kinds were delved into in some detail.  The sequel got more than a little wierd, though.  However, I don't recall any analog to Rediduum. 

I do agree that it was a neat/simple idea for dealing with the issue of making/re-making/liquidating magic items, though.  Though more on the "it's a game," pro-abstraction, level...


----------



## Tony Vargas

Bedrockgames said:


> I was always quite torn over the whole build thing. ...I think there are two basic things I found different about it that changed things. The first is the books were much more written for the players rather than the GM and there was a baked in assumption that worked its way into the gaming culture over time, that if it was in the books, the players have access to it.



 The Cult of RAW, yeah.    That's not so much an artifact of build systems, in general, as the 3.x approach to it still being so very... well Core-D&D-experience-like, actually.  In older versions of D&D, you had no real direct/voluntary control over how your character developed after choosign race/class, the DM might decide that the magic pool you drank from turned your skin purple, or you might get a magic item that made you superhumanly strong, or swapped your assigned sex.  While, in 3e, you had a tremendous lattitude to customize your character with MCing and with make/buy items, you still had this dependence on the items and options being arbitrarily spelled out - by designers in a published book rather than by the DM, but you still needed exactly the right option to be published to be able to use it.  You couldn't customize to a deeper level (or granularity) like you could in the ground-breaking build systems from the early 80s.  

It was still very much a compromise between a player-mediated build system and an arbitrary, DM mediated path of character development (with da rulez stepping on the DM's toes a bit).  



> The other aspect was that in order to enjoy the game, you really had to know how to make a build and enjoy maximizing a given character's potential within the system. That isn't for everyone.



The magnitude of that issue is directly related to the complexity & balance of the build system.  It was a very serious issue for 3.x/PF because the swings in effectiveness of a build could be so extreme, but even in that case, the DM could limit the problem - but only by limiting options (restricting everyone to Tier 3 classes, for instance).  Of course, the GM could 'take back control,' and alievate this second issue, as well, by auditing & approving builds, by doing pre-built 'packages' or even doing all the builds, himself (still to player concepts, so some of the advantage of a build system could be retained).


----------



## Bedrockgames

Tony Vargas said:


> The Cult of RAW, yeah.    That's not so much an artifact of build systems, in general, as the 3.x approach to it still being so very... well Core-D&D-experience-like, actually.  In older versions of D&D, you had no real direct/voluntary control over how your character developed after choosign race/class, the DM might decide that the magic pool you drank from turned your skin purple, or you might get a magic item that made you superhumanly strong, or swapped your assigned sex.  While, in 3e, you had a tremendous lattitude to customize your character with MCing and with make/buy items, you still had this dependence on the items and options being arbitrarily spelled out - by designers in a published book rather than by the DM, but you still needed exactly the right option to be published to be able to use it.  You couldn't customize to a deeper level (or granularity) like you could in the ground-breaking build systems from the early 80s.
> 
> It was still very much a compromise between a player-mediated build system and an arbitrary, DM mediated path of character development (with da rulez stepping on the DM's toes a bit).
> 
> The magnitude of that issue is directly related to the complexity & balance of the build system.  It was a very serious issue for 3.x/PF because the swings in effectiveness of a build could be so extreme, but even in that case, the DM could limit the problem - but only by limiting options (restricting everyone to Tier 3 classes, for instance).  Of course, the GM could 'take back control,' and alievate this second issue, as well, by auditing & approving builds, by doing pre-built 'packages' or even doing all the builds, himself (still to player concepts, so some of the advantage of a build system could be retained).




3E's strength is its customizability. But I think on most days, that isn't what I was looking for in D&D. And I definitely wasn't looking for player customization to have such an impact on the setting itself (which it often would in my experience in 3E). I am not knocking the system. I played it for its duration. But my assessment of it by the end, and after going back to AD&D, is that the latter gave me more of what I was looking for from D&D. If I want customization, I would prefer something like the 2E class kits to what we ended up with in 3E. That said, I'd certainly use 3E again for the right campaign.


----------



## Tony Vargas

Bedrockgames said:


> 3E's strength is its customizability.



 Of characters, by the player, yes.  While 5e's is the customizability of the campaign by the DM. 

Makes it dreadfully hard to say which is difinitively the better game.



> But I think on most days, that isn't what I was looking for in D&D. And I definitely wasn't looking for player customization to have such an impact on the setting itself (which it often would in my experience in 3E).



 Yeah, that definitely seems like an artifact not of customization, but of how it was delivered:  in a 'list based' fashion, through an ever-growing selection of supplements & player-facing options, each very specific in fluff/flavor.  If a player reeeeallly wanted a particulare function, effect, combo or whatever on the mechanics side, he might be 'forced' to bring in conflicting or campaign-inappropriate 'flavors'; if he wanted a particular flavor, he had to wait for it to get a mechanical reprentation and hope it meshed with the rest of the build, or create a build around it.  

In either case, it dovetailed with the need to have RAW respected in order to play what you wanted, to result in players sometimes wanting to bring in characters that would add to or re-define aspects of the campaign setting, just so they could exist.  

It was different from earlier eds only in that, then, it would have been entirely up to the DM to add something different from the usual suspects.



> If I want customization, I would prefer something like the 2E class kits to what we ended up with in 3E. That said, I'd certainly use 3E again for the right campaign.



 2e kits were a little unfocused.  Some were more like Backgrounds in 4e/5e, just where your character came from before gaining his class, others were more like 4e Themes, who the character was as he continued to adventure, and some more like 5e sub-classes, changing how the class worked or what it represented.  One mechanic trying to do too much, perhaps.


----------



## Bedrockgames

Tony Vargas said:


> .
> 
> 2e kits were a little unfocused.  Some were more like Backgrounds in 4e/5e, just where your character came from before gaining his class, others were more like 4e Themes, who the character was as he continued to adventure, and some more like 5e sub-classes, changing how the class worked or what it represented.  One mechanic trying to do too much, perhaps.




I may have liked them due to their wide application and what you describe as a lack of focus. For me it was about the right level of customization for D&D. They also leaned more on flavor than crunch, which I liked.


----------



## Tony Vargas

Bedrockgames said:


> I may have liked them due to their wide application and what you describe as a lack of focus. For me it was about the right level of customization for D&D. They also leaned more on flavor than crunch, which I liked.



 It was quite a range.  There were Thief Kits that were a sentence or two and a minor bonus, Fighter kits that were a paragraph of flavor, and at least one Wizard kit (Mystic, IIRC, I played one for a minute or two) that was a page long and gave a couple of significant special abilities.  Later kits in, like, the Complete Boook of Elves were notoriously broken, too.

I can't recall:  could you take more than one Kit, if you were cleric/wizard elf could you take an Elf Kit, Cleric Kit, & wizard Kit?


----------



## pemerton

Tony Vargas said:


> Nod.  You're saying that the sense of mystery is helpful in achieving the goal of immersion, I'm saying that a sense of immersion is helpful in achieving the goal of mystery (or maybe I should say 'uncertainty' or 'disocvery' or 'wonder').  Six of one, half-dozen of the other.
> 
> The point is, you can't go letting players make a magic-item 'wish list' OOC, that the DM will even take into consideration.  They could, IC, learn about and decide to quest for specific items, of course.



Making a "wish list" is at odds with the GM telling the players a story.  But it's not at odds with immersion.



Tony Vargas said:


> Having had many of these discussion, I've reached the conclusion that there's no objective level or degree of abstraction or detail or whatever that is, however subjectively, a line that, once crossed, is too much.  Rather, it appears the issue with a given mechanic getting in the way of the style of play is subjective to the point of being entirely arbitrary, and if there is a consistent determinant, at all, it's long familiarity with and acceptance of working around the mechanic in question to get the desired feel from the game.



That seems true.


----------



## pemerton

R_Chance said:


> Mystery. A lack of perfect knowledge (for the players) and the need to discover what exactly is going on. Personally I enjoy watching them figure it out when I DM. I, and my players in short, find that exciting. Not so much (for the players) if they already know. Ymmv.



Solving GM-authored mysteries is not a big part of the sorts of games I run. That's not to say that there are not unknown things, but generally they're unknown to the GM as well as the players.



R_Chance said:


> If the player has created the story then I'd ask why you need a DM? To administer the players story? I understand that players contribute to the world and story, but (imho) the DM has more input on that than any single player certainly. Ymmv.



Well, I referred to the player _driving_ the story. That is not an uncommon approach to RPGing. The role of the GM is to frame the challenges.



R_Chance said:


> The games I've plaid in are not driven by one players conception of his or her character. What about everybody else? Did every one else say "we're all about them"? I understand that different characters will shine at different moments in a game, Each may have a storyline in which they are more important. But the rest have to be happy too.



In my personal experience it's not that hard to run a game that integrates the concerns of multiple PCs as presented and played out by their players.



R_Chance said:


> I suspect we play different types of games. We were all about exploration and discovery and that is still the style of game we play. That was more important than the characters in many ways. I suspect we are each happy with our own style.



Here are session reports from 4e at paragon and epic, Classic Traveller and Burning Wheel. They give a reasonable sense of the sort of game I enjoy.


----------



## Bedrockgames

Tony Vargas said:


> It was quite a range.  There were Thief Kits that were a sentence or two and a minor bonus, Fighter kits that were a paragraph of flavor, and at least one Wizard kit (Mystic, IIRC, I played one for a minute or two) that was a page long and gave a couple of significant special abilities.  Later kits in, like, the Complete Boook of Elves were notoriously broken, too.




I think it would heavily derail the thread getting hung up on kits. But I would once again, just say to folks, check them out yourselves. My experience of them is they are generally pretty light mechanically and don't have the optimization heft of say 3E builds with multi-classing or prestige classes. Also the flavor tends to be robust, but the 2E line is pretty big. There are a huge number of books with kits in them. Some were better than others. The Bard book for instance had some great material, mostly as an aid to making a fleshed out character (and as an aid for the GM to draw on for setting material). But again, folks ought to investigate and decide for themselves.


----------



## Bedrockgames

Tony Vargas said:


> I can't recall:  could you take more than one Kit, if you were cleric/wizard elf could you take an Elf Kit, Cleric Kit, & wizard Kit?




I can't remember off the top of my head on this one. But if you do go looking for the answer, one point of caution I would give is 2E wasn't always consistent so you might want to check a few different places to see if the answer is always the same. I remember being in a heated discussion over Ranger abilities (pretty sure it had to do with the Ranger at least). It may have had to do with dual wielding or multiple attacks, but so long ago can't remember. It turned out me and the other poster were both right in a sense because the players handbook said I was right, but the Fighters handbook said he was right. And the two positions were mutually exclusive, so depending on how you look at it, it was either just a blatant contradiction or oddly placed errata.


----------



## Tony Vargas

Bedrockgames said:


> I think it would heavily derail the thread getting hung up on kits.



 It's OK, I was just bringing in a historical perspective.  Kits were, by the standards of TSR era D&D, something of an innovation, but they were all over the map.  Later build mechanics - backgrounds, themes, feats, archetypes, etc - often were a bit like Kits, because kits were so varied in what they tried to do.



Bedrockgames said:


> I can't remember off the top of my head on this one. But if you do go looking for the answer, one point of caution I would give is 2E wasn't always consistent so you might want to check a few different places to see if the answer is always the same.



 Yeah, I gave up on 2e about half way through the run, and don't have nearly all the books, so I wouldn't go digging around in it like I sometimes do 1e.  

The inconsistency among the early Complete Books that I do have, though, was striking.  Complete Fighter seemed kinda 'meh,' until Complete Theif came out and was just... IDK, 'why did you even bother?'  While Complete Wizard had some comparatively OP stuff.  And, in stark contrast, Complete Priest had some great stuff that almost didn't seem to come from the same game.  (And Complete Elves I know only by reputation.)



> ... the players handbook said I was right, but the Fighters handbook said he was right. And the two positions were mutually exclusive, so depending on how you look at it, it was either just a blatant contradiction or oddly placed errata.



 2e wasn't any worse than 1e, that way, and it at least had the excuse of more different folks writing for it.


----------



## R_Chance

pemerton said:


> Solving GM-authored mysteries is not a big part of the sorts of games I run. That's not to say that there are not unknown things, but generally they're unknown to the GM as well as the players.




Often I (as DM) know the answer. Sometimes I don't and it evolves with the players choices. I never let them know that I don't know though  My campaign setting is over 40 years old. There are a lot of things to be explored and a lot of material developed over the years that none of my players have discovered. I enjoy detailing my world. 



pemerton said:


> Well, I referred to the player _driving_ the story. That is not an uncommon approach to RPGing. The role of the GM is to frame the challenges.




Common yes (I guess), just not my style. If my world was less... complex and developed I could see it.



pemerton said:


> In my personal experience it's not that hard to run a game that integrates the concerns of multiple PCs as presented and played out by their players.




That depends entirely on the players. If they are cooperative (with each other and the DM) I'm certain it would be fine.



pemerton said:


> Here are session reports from 4e at paragon and epic, Classic Traveller and Burning Wheel. They give a reasonable sense of the sort of game I enjoy.




I need to spend some time looking over these. I always enjoy seeing another game "at work". What is odd is that I'm only starting to pay attention to streamed games. I skipped 4E but I love Traveller (especially Classic with the DGP task resolution system or Megatraveller).

*edit* Sigh. Spelling and grammar.


----------



## pemerton

R_Chance said:


> Common yes (I guess), just not my style. If my world was less... complex and developed I could see it.



I don't think that player-driven RPGing is at odds with a complex/developed world. It does affect the way the development takes place.



R_Chance said:


> I skipped 4E but I love Traveller (especially Classic with the DGP task resolution system or Megatraveller).



Well . . . if you look at my Traveller play report you'll see my mini-rant against MegaTraveller (sorry, it seems like I'm destined to be taking a different perspective from you even though I'm not really trying to be that contrary!).


----------



## R_Chance

pemerton said:


> I don't think that player-driven RPGing is at odds with a complex/developed world. It does affect the way the development takes place.
> [?QUOTE]
> 
> The problem arises in the lack of knowledge on the players part. You could re-write the world to suit their story, but the advantage of a detailed existing world is reduced. If the players story is basic it could be folded in fairly easily, but the more involved their ideas, the harder it gets. I have background handouts for players to make sure they know the basics that their PCs should know. It gives them a basis to start with. My game is a sandbox with adventures interwoven in it. The players / PCs have a lot of choice in what they will do.
> 
> 
> 
> pemerton said:
> 
> 
> 
> Well . . . if you look at my Traveller play report you'll see my mini-rant against MegaTraveller (sorry, it seems like I'm destined to be taking a different perspective from you even though I'm not really trying to be that contrary!).
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> I like the task resolution system, but that's no big deal. Setting difficulty numbers as needed was OK. There is a lot of unnecessary grit in MegaTraveller though. After designing a ship in MT I feel like I really built it  That kind of pushed me back to Classic Traveller.
> 
> If you like game play springing from the die rolls you should look over Stars Without Number by Kevin Crawford. There is an incredible amount of inspiration in that book (and there is a free PDF version of it). If you don't know it, it's a Travelleresque OSR game built on three classes. There are extensive resources for different areas in books and freebies (the books tend to parallel Traveller books IV+). I robbed it blind for my Traveller game. For science fiction I prefer skill based systems rather than class based. Still it's a game I would play or GM without hesitation.
Click to expand...


----------



## pemerton

R_Chance said:


> If you like game play springing from the die rolls you should look over Stars Without Number by Kevin Crawford. There is an incredible amount of inspiration in that book (and there is a free PDF version of it). If you don't know it, it's a Travelleresque OSR game built on three classes. There are extensive resources for different areas in books and freebies (the books tend to parallel Traveller books IV+). I robbed it blind for my Traveller game. For science fiction I prefer skill based systems rather than class based. Still it's a game I would play or GM without hesitation.



I've got a couple of (free) PDF versions of Stars Without Number, but have never read it closely. I thnk [MENTION=16586]Campbell[/MENTION] on these boards is a fan.

I should take a closer look at it.


----------



## Tony Vargas

The following post is certified fee of transfats, GMOs,  and seriousness,  but may have been processed on machinery used in processing of peanuts & tree nuts, or just nuts in general.



pemerton said:


> Here are session reports from 4e at paragon and epic, Classic Traveller and Burning Wheel. They give a reasonable sense of the sort of game I enjoy.



 Doesn't really help:  all I can tell from those is that you seem enjoy fun.  (I can't even say "enjoy games that don't suck," because I've actually played Traveler back in the day, and it was every bit as good as D&D.)

I won't make any blanket statements about that - everyone has their own preference, and, yours may not be representative...


----------



## pemerton

Tony Vargas said:


> all I can tell from that is you seem enjoy fun.



You can also see stuff that is absent (eg no GM-authored mysteries to resolve) and stuff that is present (eg significant player contributions to the fiction, to what counts as a "solution", etc).


----------



## Tony Vargas

pemerton said:


> You can also see *stuff that is absent* (eg no GM-authored mysteries to resolve) and stuff that is present (eg significant player contributions to the fiction, to what counts as a "solution", etc).



I'm sure that former category is huge, yes.


----------

