[Not 4e] What will we see from 5e?

[RandomCasualty2]

You are invoking Oberoni by making a bunch of new ranged MOBs to handle the massive lack of them by default.

Only that's not even Oberoni, because creating new monsters is supported by the rules.

Look at the official modules for 4E, they create new monsters and unique NPC abilities all the time. That's not Oberoni, that's part of the game.

You're crying Oberoni just for a DM creating adventures, given that the official modules do that kind of shit all the time. Custom traps, Custom monsters, fuck man... that's what 4E is all about.

What? An orc with a longbow?! OBERONI!!! The MM says they only have axes!

[Hotpants Joe]

I realize now why Roy has been ignored by half of this board. He applies Sirlin inappropriately, recites internet memes as though it's a substitute for wit in every post, and just plain doesn't get RPGs.

Roy: As I'm sure has been said to you quite a bit, welcome to the ignore list.

[Username17]

Complaints like "the game totally breaks at level 30" with proof is a legitimate gripe. If it's at the point where the DM has to bend over backwards just to make combat at that stage palatable, then that's definitely a case of problematic rules. But needing to fix the easy-factor of skill challenges by limiting aid other action is hardly indicative of a problematic rule. It's a stupidly easy fix that is arguably common sense. Please tell me you see the difference here.

Stop being a disingenuous twat. Seriously.

We have said over and over again that the Skill Challenge rules do not work by ANY METRIC. The fact that they have come out with literally five different numeric reimaginings of the numeric inputs on those stupid things and they have all sucked isn't even the point. If there was some amount of numeric tweaking where they could be made to work properly, it would be inexcusable in an edition whose selling point was that "the math just works" but it would actually be a relatively minor gripe.

But that's not the deal. The deal is that the 4e Skill Challenges are a Total and complete failure from all possible points of view. They have design goals, and they do not meet them. At all.

And the fact that you're still arguing this as if a +2 or a -3 to something or other somewhere along the line might make some amount of difference to anything is pathetic. We gave you the links, we gave you the arguments. You aren't engaging them. This means that either you're too stupid to understand the plain case made against skill challenges, or you're so engrossed in trying to score points against irrelevant Roy rants that you haven't even made the attempt to understand the real arguments on the table.

Well, it's on the table. If you want to get taken seriously, talk about the real problems that people really have with Skill Challenges. Like the fact that they do literally none of the things that they are supposed to do and the people who wrote them and sold them for real money never playtested them or even subjected them to casual mathematical or game theory analysis. The skill challenges are garbage. Not because the numbers don't add up - although they do not - but because the very structure of them is antithetical to any of things they are supposedly for.

And frankly, if I have to say that one more time to you, you're going on ignore.

-Username17

[Doom]

Is there a combined list somewhere listing all the ways skill challenges, as written, are crap? I've been playing "Dungeons and Dragons" 4.0 for a year now, and I still haven't managed to houserule anything that makes skill challenges make any sort of real sense, but let's see if I can get the combined list started:

1) "A million dice rolls, two outcomes." As written, skill challenges are dice derbies where you roll until you reach the end, and sometimes you get to make rolls and influence other rolls, but don't actually get you closer to the end. Gibberish, and no more than a version of "Advanced Knucklebones".

2) "The DC and difficulty levels for chance of success don't make a damn bit of sense". Really no way around this, and I houserule the numbers to basically whatever I'm shooting for, modifying at whim if the players come up with something smart or stupid. Fifteen seconds into a skill challenge, and I'm already done with RAW for them.

3) "Aid Another is retarded, and gets more retarded as characters gain level." I've houseruled that you can only Aid if you're trained in the skill, and nothing better than this band-aid has come to mind.

4) "Just let the guy with the highest skill modifier make all the rolls". Obviously, as written, that would be the intelligent way to play (and a wild violation of the entire point of skill challenges). I've house ruled that each skill roll can only be made one time...this, of course, puts me at the point where what I'm using as skill challenges can no longer possibly resemble what they have in the book. Seriously, how many times can you use Nature to follow a trail? Seems like one time is good enough, but the whole "10 successes before 5 failures" concept becomes impossible, then.

5) "So few skills means so few options." To touch on the previous idea, Perception, for example, can follow tracks, see smoke in the sky, judge the lay of the land, note where birds are flying...or damn near anything else the player can rationalize. The end result is players have no choice but to look at their skill sheet, see what has the highest +, and make up a reason why that skill works...and we're not even going to go to the "make this skill roll, and get a +2 on some other skill roll" dice derby crap again. I've houseruled either a skill is relevant, or it is not...I need a houserule for that?

6) "Does a total fail screw the party? Is four straight successes better than 4 successes and one failure? Anyone?" You make the History roll to find the old map of the secret tunnel, but blow the Perception check to find the secret door at the end...still, the first roll helps, even as you're now making a diplomacy roll to talk your way past the guards at the front door, making the secret tunnel irrelevant. Branching paths should make some sort of sense in skill challenges, but, as written, it's gibberish. I've houseruled that failures usually cause penalties for the first encounter (party walks into an ambush, but this is so minor the whole dice derby was irrelevant), or drain off healing surges (rather screws over animal companions and low surge characters unfairly)...but branching possiblities is just a major headache. I really would like to have the possibility of failures leading to different encounters, but the system just can't handle it.

So, what other problems did I miss?

[MartinHarper]

There's a lot of creatures in the MM with Ranged 20 attacks. There's even about 15 with 15/30 or 20/40 ranged attacks.

That's why you shoot the monsters with ranged 20 attacks at range 40. That way, unless they have a base move of 18, they can't shoot you back, and you win. Most of the 15/30 ones don't have a base move of 8+, so they still can't shoot you back. But sure, there are counters, even on the open plains. There are a few monsters that can move faster than horses, and there are lots of Lurkers. Worst case, Rain Falls, Everywhere's a Closet.

[Roy]

You are invoking Oberoni by making a bunch of new ranged MOBs to handle the massive lack of them by default.

Only that's not even Oberoni, because creating new monsters is supported by the rules.

Look at the official modules for 4E, they create new monsters and unique NPC abilities all the time. That's not Oberoni, that's part of the game.

You're crying Oberoni just for a DM creating adventures, given that the official modules do that kind of shit all the time. Custom traps, Custom monsters, fuck man... that's what 4E is all about.

What? An orc with a longbow?! OBERONI!!! The MM says they only have axes!

Except that it is, because we aren't talking about a new MOB here and there. We're talking about reinventing the entire monster system, because less than 5% of it can fight back at all due to the rest being out ranged.

If you had to rewrite one or more entire monster manuals just to make 3.5 things be able to counter basic tactics that would be Oberoni as well. But see, you don't because while 3.5 is fucked up, you have to try a lot harder to make it so.

Also, since in 4.Fail being based off a different pair of stats or a different weapon is seriously being marketed as a new class due to hyperspecialization taken to absurd lengths an orc with a longbow actually would be Oberoni because it creates a completely new MOB. In systems that don't make insects look like jacks of all trades that would not be so (and no one would really give a fuck if the Orc uses his much lower Dex to shoot arrows at you). But this is 4.Fail, and that's not on the sprite. Full stop.

As for this 'running from foes' bit, well if you're trying to argue 4.Fail is D&D then being exceptionally cautious is nothing new. Even with the rep it has for Padded Sumo, Focus Fire will still do some serious RLT on you. So if you aren't risk averse, you get hit by stuff you can't counter and die violently. Of course it's D&D in name only, but the need to slink around to avoid getting annihilated is still there in a lesser form.

And to Failtard Joe: You sure do love that mirror.

[RandomCasualty2]

Except that it is, because we aren't talking about a new MOB here and there. We're talking about reinventing the entire monster system, because less than 5% of it can fight back at all due to the rest being out ranged.

Well yes, not surprisingly given that the existing monsters are designed for dungeons, you'll have trouble transporting them other places. This isn't to say all the monsters are invalid, just some of them.

If you had to rewrite one or more entire monster manuals just to make 3.5 things be able to counter basic tactics that would be Oberoni as well. But see, you don't because while 3.5 is fucked up, you have to try a lot harder to make it so.

Huh? You can very easily fuck over the 3.5 monster manuals by just not fighting monsters and staying in the city. Seriously. Stay in the city the entire time and your DM has to constantly invent humanoid NPCs, which by the way is way WAY more work than making 4E monsters. If you never go in dungeons or ruins in 3.5, that much of the MM is just as useless, if not more so. Since like you can just run around hunting dire bears with flight magic as your entire gimmick.

Using the same "I only do adventures that I want" paradigm, you can easily fuck up 3.5. I mean it's not like kiting wasn't super effective in 3.5 either. Flight magic just made a lot of encounters completely trivial.

It's just that you consider making NPCs in 3.5 to be okay, and making NPCs and monsters in 4E to be Oberoni, which is such bullshit.

Not to mention the whole Oberoni thing gets really stupid anyway... because everyone house rules 3.5. I would not play a 3.5 game RAW at all, nor would most of the people here. So trying to say 4E sucks because it requires some house rules is a laughable argument. Really, you should be trying to show that it's harder to fix than 3.5 with house rules, because both systems need house ruling.

[Psychic Robot]

The difference between 3e and 4e is that you can give a monster a bow in 3e and know exactly what its attack bonus is and how much damage it will do. In 4e, the game disintegrates.

[Username17]

So, what other problems did I miss?

I think you got it all. By which I mean that you got the entire system, which is accurate. You can subdivide those problems a bit, but basically you touched on every aspect of the system, which is unfortunate but reasonable as an assessment. The system is so fubar that you aren't rationally asking what parts need tweaking, but rather what entirely different system could be written instead. And that would be entirely dependent upon what your goals were.

Let's consider the goals of Black Forest as regards complex challenges:

• Every player should be encouraged to contribute.
• Every player's contribution should take the form of magical teaparty as much as possible, with die rolling being secondary.
• Players should vary their input continuously rather than spam the same crap over and over again.
• The direction of the story should be very flexible.
• The outputs of a challenge should be as non-binary as possible.

So with those goals in mind we can lay down the foundations for a complex challenge:

• The challenge itself is broken up into acts, where the main obstacle of the act is defined differently for each act.
• Players go around in order using their incredibly vaguely defined traits like "outsdoorsy" and "cautious" to explain how they are approaching the current act in MTP format. This may or may not be converted into a die roll that is then rolled. Their failures may hurt them, but do not terminate the act for the other players.
• The act ends when a player's turn comes up and they want to go to the next act, which they can do because the current act is solved enough or because everyone is out of things to do to not screw up the current act.

But if you wanted to do Star Trek, you'd probably want to slap a problem down to several discrete chunks and let each player work on one of them, with wildly different selections of the well defined skill list being available for use in each of the chunks. And some of the chunks would be defined as Positive (you keep getting rounds until you get enough successes), and others would be defined as Negative (you keep getting rounds until you get enough failures). Because in that case you legitimately want the team diplomat to be stalling the discussion to try to buy time for the Engineer to bring down the transport interdicter (or other technobabble).

The 4e Skill Challenge rules are just worthless. Not just for their supposed intended purpose, but for any purpose.

-Username17

[Ice9]

I think they could be significantly improved though, with a minor change. Instead of "X successes before Y failures", we go with "X successes within Y rounds" - where a round is each player making one check or aid attempt.

This solves quite a few of the problems:
* People with less than the highest bonus aren't making things worse by participating - even a 25% chance of another success is better than nothing.
* Whether to Aid Another is legitimately a choice, that will occasionally make sense but not be at all the default.
* We can define more than binary results by seeing how close to reaching the goal the players were when time ran out.

Now this still doesn't make skill challenges an inherently interesting structure - they're a framework to play magical teaparty on. I think they could actually be made tactical (consequences, multiple/branching tracks, multiple uses for a successful check), but that may impede their teaparty support.

[RandomCasualty2]

The difference between 3e and 4e is that you can give a monster a bow in 3e and know exactly what its attack bonus is and how much damage it will do. In 4e, the game disintegrates.

Though really most of the time, that's also a weakness, since 3E monsters just aren't built for ranged combat, and they make god awful archers. 4E monsters, since they're made of arbitrarium, can be as effective an archer as you want them to be pretty mcuh.

[MartinHarper]

The difference between 3e and 4e is that you can give a monster a bow in 3e and know exactly what its attack bonus is and how much damage it will do. In 4e, the game disintegrates.

No, it doesn't. Monsters can make Basic Ranged Attacks. So Dex vs AC for [W]+Dex damage.

[Bill Bisco: Isometric Imp]

Previously we were Talking about Mongols and Ranged Attacks.

I made a Spreadsheet for Which monsters had Ranged Attacks, what their speed was, and what was the maximum distance that they could attack at (For Example: Run + Shoot and Run +Charge). The spreadsheet encompasses levels 1-10. Nothing real fancy, I was just curious.

The File is here http://cid-a9563c3784075b73.skydrive.li ... dsheet.xls

Anyway, some interesting results that I saw.



If you can ride a Riding Horse and have it take a double move to move 20 spaces, then 65% of the enemies for levels 1-10 cannot fight you back.

[Psychic Robot]

4E monsters, since they're made of arbitrarium, can be as effective an archer as you want them to be pretty mcuh.

You can do that with 3e monsters, too. It's just not part of the rules.

No, it doesn't. Monsters can make Basic Ranged Attacks. So Dex vs AC for [W]+Dex damage.

You're going to get a retarded attack bonus that way.

[Username17]

No, it doesn't. Monsters can make Basic Ranged Attacks. So Dex vs AC for [W]+Dex damage.

You're going to get a retarded attack bonus that way.

You're not even going to have that. Monsters only get the basic attacks defined for them. A monster that is listed without a ranged weapon can't make Ranged Basic Attacks. Monster Manual, page 7.

I mean yeah, a 15th level Drow Priest has a basic attack with their mace of +18. If you have them calculate their basic ranged attack to for some reason give them one it comes out to only +9. You know, because they don't have listed equipment, feats, class features, or proficiencies. So if they could make ranged basic attacks which they can't, their attack bonuses would be off the Random Number Generator.

-Username17

[MartinHarper]

Sorry, should be Dex + Prof.

You're going to get a retarded attack bonus that way.

I disagree. Let's consider low level Orc Archers, by way of example. I'm going to go with the ultra simple approach where I give monster X weapon Y without otherwise modifying its stat block.

4e: I take an Orc Raider (level 3 skirmisher) from the monster manual and give her a longbow. She now has a Range 20/40 Basic Attack, +5 vs AC, 1d10+3 damage, that ignores cover and concealment if the target is within five squares. Level appropriate.

3e: I take the 1st level Orc Warrior from the SRD and give her a longbow. She now has a range 100ft attack that is +1 vs AC, 1d8 piercing damage, with a x3 crit. Lame.

Maybe the retardation will be more obvious at higher level? Let's consider Angel Archers.

4e: Angel of Vengeance. Incidentally, this monster can teleport adjacent to a PC as a move action, so good luck kiting it. However, if it decides to pick up a longbow instead, it gets a Range 20/40 Basic Attack, +15 vs AC attack, 1d10 + 13 damage. Decidedly weaker than its melee attack, but functional.

3e: Astral Deva. With a basic longbow, it has a range 100ft attack that is +16/+11/+6 vs AC, 1d8 piercing damage, with a x3 crit.

In this narrow respect, 4e wins.

[Bill Bisco: Isometric Imp]

You should be giving the Astral Deva an appropriate +Str Bow.

[Username17]

"Worse than its melee attack?"

Its melee attack is +25 vs. AC. A +15 vs. AC hits on a natural 20 only. It's totally off the RNG. What the fuck are you talking about?

-Username17

[MartinHarper]

Monsters only get the basic attacks defined for them. A monster that is listed without a ranged weapon can't make Ranged Basic Attacks. Monster Manual, page 7.

No, you're wrong. Monsters can do all the stuff under "Actions in Combat" (PHB 286) except take Second Wind action, because Second Wind is explicitly called out as "only available to player characters". Hence they can Run, Grab, Ready an Action, Delay, Crawl, Stand Up, etc, etc. They can also make a "Ranged Basic Attack" with the flavour text "You resort to the simple attack you learned when you first picked up a ranged weapon".

[Torko]

n/m

[Username17]

Monsters only get the basic attacks defined for them. A monster that is listed without a ranged weapon can't make Ranged Basic Attacks. Monster Manual, page 7.

No, you're wrong. Monsters can do all the stuff under "Actions in Combat" (PHB 286) except take Second Wind action, because Second Wind is explicitly called out as "only available to player characters". Hence they can Run, Grab, Ready an Action, Delay, Crawl, Stand Up, etc, etc. They can also make a "Ranged Basic Attack" with the flavour text "You resort to the simple attack you learned when you first picked up a ranged weapon".

No. They can't.

Basic Attack: The first attack presented is always the monster’s basic attack (usually a melee attack). Some monsters have several basic attacks. A basic attack has a circle around its icon: melee basic attack (m) or ranged basic attack (r).
Monsters use their basic attacks when making opportunity attacks or when using powers that allow a basic attack.

The basic attacks that monsters get are the ones that have little circles in their writeup. No more. No less. Exception based design!

-Username17

[MartinHarper]

You should be giving the Astral Deva an appropriate +Str Bow.

No. We're talking here about "giving a monster a bow", perhaps because it was on the floor somewhere, and the system giving the DM bullshit numbers that don't work, and this apparently being a good thing. We're explicitly not talking about DM's using their brain in any capacity to create a sensible well-rounded combat challenge, because that would be the Oberoni fallacy.

What the fuck are you talking about?

Apparently, I'm misreading a +15 as a +25. Bah. I agree, that's retarded. I'm sorry.
Arguably I should also be adding on the +7 level bonus from the DMG (under creating NPCs), but that's rules-as-interpreted.

The basic attacks that monsters get are the ones that have little circles in their writeup. No more. No less. Exception based design!

Oh... that's sneaky. In my games I'll let my monsters pick up bows, but I accept that this is another place where the rules are ambiguous, to go along with self-adjacency and being your own enemy. I suppose that does prove PR's point - the rules are ambiguous about what happens, whereas 3e has clear rules on precisely how level inappropriate a Deva with a bow will be.

[Frantic]

Like the fact that they do literally none of the things that they are supposed to do and the people who wrote them and sold them for real money never playtested them or even subjected them to casual mathematical or game theory analysis.

I'm not going to say I agree or disagree with you, but do you have proof of them not playtesting skill challenges? There are a lot of 'facts' posted on this board that are just opinions or drivel, after all.

And to Failtard Joe: You sure do love that mirror.

I love how you just prove his point by doing the equivalent of a 'no u'.

As for this 'running from foes' bit, well if you're trying to argue 4.Fail is D&D then being exceptionally cautious is nothing new. Even with the rep it has for Padded Sumo, Focus Fire will still do some serious RLT on you.

Bullshit. You are delusional. Focus fire on a PC? What the fucking fuck difference does that make? Any defender, except perhaps Paladin, will fucking grind your theory like the bullshit it is, you fucking fucker.

The difference between 3e and 4e is that you can give a monster a bow in 3e and know exactly what its attack bonus is and how much damage it will do. In 4e, the game disintegrates.

Or you open your DMG? Seriously, do you people ever actually use common sense with game design or does the DM just not have a purpose in your games? Actually, don't fucking answer that, this is 3.5 we're talking about.

But really. Page 184 of the DMG will give you any info you need to know about monster-design, and thus will let you know exactly how ranged attacks work out for the monster/damage it does. Just because it's not in the MM doesn't mean you're going to have cardiac arrest for having a monster draw a fucking longbow.

[Psychic Robot]

Or you open your DMG? Seriously, do you people ever actually use common sense with game design or does the DM just not have a purpose in your games? Actually, don't fucking answer that, this is 3.5 we're talking about.

But really. Page 184 of the DMG will give you any info you need to know about monster-design, and thus will let you know exactly how ranged attacks work out for the monster/damage it does. Just because it's not in the MM doesn't mean you're going to have cardiac arrest for having a monster draw a fucking longbow.

Here comes the lulz: random bullshit numbers based on a monster's combat role.

First of all, let me laugh at 4e for including a system where the numbers are all bullshit and yet the RNG is still fucked. Next, let me laugh at 4e for demonstrating spectacularly the potential for fuck-ups in a system where monsters are generated via different means than characters. Then let me show you why you fail.

I can take pretty much any monster in the 4e MM to demonstrate how fucking stupid your idea is, but I'll turn to the ogres first.

Ogre savage: level 8 brute. Primary attack is +11 vs. AC; 1d10 + 5 damage. Then that ogre picks up a few decently-sized rocks and hurls them at the PCs. What's his attack bonus and damage? According to the DMG, it's going to be +11 vs. AC, 2d6+5 damage. Thus, it's to the ogre's benefit to hurl rocks at the PCs from 40 squares or whatever the fuck distance it is.

Now, I can already see two objections forming in your head. The first one is retarded: "But what if the ogre runs out of rocks?" Fuck you for being a moron; use a bow instead of rocks, then, you goddamn retard. You're just arguing over nitpicky shit at that point.

The second is more valid: "The ogre isn't very smart. He should probably just charge up and smash the PCs."

And I'll give you that one. The ogre is a big, dumb brute, and he'll probably fight the PCs in the manner intended by the developers: no tactics, no strategy, melee attacks only, FINAL DESTINATION.

So let's move on to something a little smarter, eh?

Sorrowsworn deathlord: level 28 lurker (leader). Primary attack is +32 vs. AC, 4d10+9 necrotic and psychic damage, and the target is weakened for 1 round. The sorrowsworn deathlord's bone bow, on the other hand, is a +33 vs. AC, and it does 4d8+10 damage. The deathlord loses out on a few points of damage in exchange for the relative safety of its ranged attacks. The deathlord, not being retarded, understands this, and so it stays about 40 squares away (teleporting away as needed) from the PCs, plinking away at their HP for about 28 damage per attack. And while this will take awhile to grind the PCs down, the deathlord will prefer spending a little extra time fighting rather than spending a lot of extra time dead.

Thus, by using the 4e rules, picking up a bow becomes a clusterfuck and the PCs cry because they can't fight the sorrowsworn deathlord.

[violence in the media]

@ Roy--This is a yurt.

@RC, hogarth, etc.--There are a couple of things that you guys aren't understanding about my line of argumentation, so I'll try and explain them better.

1. Just because you're a PC adventurer doesn't mean you have to do everything that comes across your plate. Obviously, if you play with the conceit that you're the only band of heroic adventurers in the land, then maybe you do. But you still have the freedom to just leave shit undone. You don't have to rescue the princess if you'd rather be out capturing owlbears. You don't need to muck about in Troll cave if you'd rather assist the town watch investigating murders. Indeed, you can even subcontract out the things you don't want to do if circumstances warrant or allow it. You are a part of the world, not the sole force holding it together.

2. Getting over your ego and playing effectively--as opposed to the way you're "supposed to"--to win fights and complete quests is a valid attitude to have. Granted, you'll grate with people who play like Elennsar and expect you to do things "the right way." You're looking at playing a Michael Westen or Simo Hayha in this sense, not a Gawain or Superman.

3. The game, out-of-the-box and as-written, should be able to support the above two approaches and not fall apart when the PC choose to reject the notion that they must run up and trade blows with the enemy.

Your game cannot rely overly much on DM arbitrarium, or else you cannot play in the ways I've mentioned at all. Being creative requires there to be known constants and predictable aspects about the world, otherwise it just devolves into Mother May I with the DM. If any common creature can, at any time, manifest EYELAZORZ! (or any other random-ass power) the players and PCs should be aware of that. In aWOD, the terrible one-off creature that doesn't play by the rules is just that. You shouldn't encounter a whole tribe of these things, otherwise they should have their own write-up. You can always play the kick-in-the-door-and-shoot-them-in-the-face style, at least for a short while, and even if the DM doesn't want you to.

Also, just because I feel it needs to be said, but I am not always as big of an asshole as you probably imagine me being. I can play the way I'm expected to, get along with the group, and grok the sensibilities of the party just fine. Sometimes I just choose not to.