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

[violence in the media]

PR, by the time the PCs are fighting that sorrowsworn, aren't they wearing bear hats, getting infinite attacks, or receiving free slurpees at participating 7-11s?

[Psychic Robot]

/facepalm

Not the point.

[violence in the media]

Sorry, I couldn't resist.

[Absentminded_Wizard]

So, am I missing something, or do HPJ's arguments consist almost entirely of 1) spamming the Oberoni fallacy, and 2) Calling 4e either a ROLEplaying game or a combat-centric game, depending on his immediate needs in the debate?

I wasn't aware that "roleplaying game" and "combat-centric game" were mutually exclusive terms. My bad. Also, thanks for not contributing to the discussion aside from ineffective criticism.

In one argument, you said that people should be "roleplaying their characters" instead of using the best tactics. Then, in response to someone's complaints about 4e's lack of support for non-combat, non-dungeon challenges, you basically said that "D&D has always been a combat-centered game."

Now, while a combat-centric game is inherently a tactics-centered game too, it is possible for roleplaying to happen even in a combat-centered game. However, you seem to think that roleplaying always means "shooting yourself and your friends in the foot." It doesn't. Roleplaying means giving your character a backstory and personality.

In a game centered on combat and tactics, the character's personality shouldn't regularly be preventing them from using the best tactics. After all, the PCs are professional adventurers. Any self-respecting adventurer in the game world would learn the best tactics to keep themselves alive and expect their teammates to do the same. So, at the end of the day, using the most effective tactics is roleplaying your character properly. At least in D&D and similar games. Having a character use poor tactics for "roleplaying" reasons should only happen on a regular basis in games where the PCs don't fight that much and thus don't have the experience to know the most effective tactics.

BTW, my apologies. I didn't know I needed to post a treatise on the topic before pointing out general stupidity.

---

On plains encounters: I agree with RC that creating new monsters doesn't fall in Oberoni territory. After all, the ability to create new monsters/spells/items etc. is part of the open-endedness of RPGs. However, it still doesn't excuse the stupidity of broken horse archers.

Sure, the game is called Dungeons and Dragons, so emphasizing dungeon encounters is sensible. Designing your game as if no encounters ever take place on open plains is stupid. Especially since wilderness adventures have a place in D&D legacy (they gave us the ranger and druid classes, after all).

On Exception-Based Monsters: So it appears that the only ways to give a melee monster a ranged weapon and keep it level-appropriate is to make up a new monster. Okay, that's doable, but it would be so much easier if you could just keep every aspect of the original monster's stat block and just change the weapon and the attack stats. It's always better to be able to modify things than to have to make them up from whole cloth. Especially since not all DMs have unlimited prep time during the week.

On skill challenges: There's no smoking gun that says WotC deliberately didn't playtest skill challenges. However, there have been statements that the version people were playtesting wasn't the version that was in the DMG. Though apparently inadvertent, the fact that nobody caught the screw-up in all the playtest reports tells you how important WotC really thinks non-combat encounters are.

[RandomCasualty2]

Sure, the game is called Dungeons and Dragons, so emphasizing dungeon encounters is sensible. Designing your game as if no encounters ever take place on open plains is stupid. Especially since wilderness adventures have a place in D&D legacy (they gave us the ranger and druid classes, after all).

Yeah without a doubt. But I mean that's a problem with 3.5 and 4E, really in any D&D edition, outdoor encounters never worked well. The argument that D&D should work in wilderness is definitely one I agree with. But that problem seems to exist in every D&D edition.

Okay, that's doable, but it would be so much easier if you could just keep every aspect of the original monster's stat block and just change the weapon and the attack stats. It's always better to be able to modify things than to have to make them up from whole cloth. Especially since not all DMs have unlimited prep time during the week.

I actually disagree, mainly because, in 3E, it's more complex to add up all the bonuses and crap than it is to just go the 4E way and look up an attack bonus and damage on a table which is solely based on level. To really make a 3E monster into an archer, you've got to rearrange feats, figure out the strength modifier on its composite bow and all that crap, assign it magic bows, bracers of archery and what not.

To really make a monster effective as an archer is a lot of work.

There's no smoking gun that says WotC deliberately didn't playtest skill challenges. However, there have been statements that the version people were playtesting wasn't the version that was in the DMG. Though apparently inadvertent, the fact that nobody caught the screw-up in all the playtest reports tells you how important WotC really thinks non-combat encounters are.

Well really, the fact that the math is so horrible with skill challenges pretty much shows they put no effort into them. I mean really, they're just rolling a bunch of dice.

[Absentminded_Wizard]

Yeah without a doubt. But I mean that's a problem with 3.5 and 4E, really in any D&D edition, outdoor encounters never worked well. The argument that D&D should work in wilderness is definitely one I agree with. But that problem seems to exist in every D&D edition.

But 4e took a step backwards. At least in 3.5, outdoor encounters aren't completely broken until flying creatures get involved.

Okay, that's doable, but it would be so much easier if you could just keep every aspect of the original monster's stat block and just change the weapon and the attack stats. It's always better to be able to modify things than to have to make them up from whole cloth. Especially since not all DMs have unlimited prep time during the week.

I actually disagree, mainly because, in 3E, it's more complex to add up all the bonuses and crap than it is to just go the 4E way and look up an attack bonus and damage on a table which is solely based on level. To really make a 3E monster into an archer, you've got to rearrange feats, figure out the strength modifier on its composite bow and all that crap, assign it magic bows, bracers of archery and what not.

To really make a monster effective as an archer is a lot of work.

If you take it out of the 3.5 vs. 4e context, wouldn't everything have been much easier if WotC had just given guidelines for both melee and ranged basic attacks for monsters. Since monsters don't have feats and are made of arbitrarium, they could have increased the game's flexibility and verisimilitude without creating a bookkeeping nightmare.

There's no smoking gun that says WotC deliberately didn't playtest skill challenges. However, there have been statements that the version people were playtesting wasn't the version that was in the DMG. Though apparently inadvertent, the fact that nobody caught the screw-up in all the playtest reports tells you how important WotC really thinks non-combat encounters are.

Well really, the fact that the math is so horrible with skill challenges pretty much shows they put no effort into them. I mean really, they're just rolling a bunch of dice.

Well, there are two distinct kinds of RPG players: liberal arts majors like me and science majors like most other Denners. It's pretty apparent that WotC's staff consists almost entirely of the former. I don't fault the liberal arts majors for not understanding probability, since I couldn't do those problems for most of my life. I do fault them for not hiring some high-school or college geek with a scientific calculator to run their numbers for them. And for not paying attention to the playtests.

[Draco_Argentum]

Well really, the fact that the math is so horrible with skill challenges pretty much shows they put no effort into them. I mean really, they're just rolling a bunch of dice.

The maths is so terrible that theres only one way it could've been playtested. They left it in a morgue overnight and since nothing wrote 'this is shit' on it they assumed it was good. If anyone had actually rolled the dice they would've seen that you can't win the printed version.

As for horse archers: they're a terrible bit of rules that shuts down outdoors adventures unless the DM puts in a bunch of work fixing things. Its not the end of the world though, how many people honestly play D&D and don't want to have their characters go indoors? Its a bug that will come up in actual play but won't dominate it completely. Its nothing like as bad as 3.x fighters being ass.

[Roy]

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.

And that is Oberoni. Full stop.

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.

That would be a decent tactic, since humanoid NPCs are Monty Hall. But then, since people have actual abilities in 3.5 and actual abilities includes disguise, there's a fair number of monsters that can show up as well. And most of those are pretty damn hardcore. So that isn't really helping you. Dragons, Outsiders... Yeah. You might be better off going outside.

Meanwhile in 4.Fail, if you encounter indoor stuff you just do what VitM said and block them in or burn it down or whatever. You know, just like real Mongols. Since loot spawns from their corpses and explicitly excludes the things they are actually using you aren't even losing out by doing this.

The rest of that is a straw man.

Well, one more thing. I am doing that already. Unless you think that constantly stumbling over game breakers (4.Fail) is somehow a better situation than having the game breakers be fairly well hidden (3.5)?

Seriously. Stuff like infinite wishes and Pun-Pun and what the fuck ever is not things that most people are even going to find. About the worst people will find by accident is the Druid class which while strong does not auto win against over 95% of the MOBs.

When "I want to ride around and shoot things." breaks your game, your game is bad and you should feel bad.

Also, why is it that bringing up Mongols makes a bunch of people whine and hide in closets? Burn that shit down.

[hogarth]

@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.

I just think it's ultra-retarded that a DM who doesn't place every encounter in his campaign on the plains is "railroading". What the fuck? That makes as much sense as putting your aquatic elf character on the bottom of the ocean and saying "lol D&D is fail becuz most monsters can't breathe underwater, I win".

[Roy]

The railroading is when the DM tries to force you off the plains when you aren't interested in doing so. The aquatic elf point would only be valid if only a very small percentage of the MOBs could swim at all. But wait, there's lots of marine life including the 'owns the world' Sahugin down there. Then everything with Water Breathing...

Nice straw man, but no.

[hogarth]

The railroading is when the DM tries to force you off the plains when you aren't interested in doing so. The aquatic elf point would only be valid if only a very small percentage of the MOBs could swim at all. But wait, there's lots of marine life including the 'owns the world' Sahugin down there. Then everything with Water Breathing...

Which 4E Monster Manual (or 3E Monster Manual) are you looking at, Roy? I see a "very small percentage" that can fight on the bottom of the ocean. Unless you start making up some monsters, in which case I wail "Oberoni! Railroading! The DM is changing the rules!" as big fat, salty tears of shame roll slowly down my face.

[Starmaker]

The railroading is when the DM tries to force you off the plains when you aren't interested in doing so.

Despite my hatred of 4e, I have to disagree. Playing spess mahreens in kindergarten is not interesting. While most people come to a game expecting that they will eventually win (I am of the opinion that this should be the default assumption), it's in everyone's best interest that the game be challenging. Auto-win per se is not bad. Coming up with a new auto-win strategy for every encounter is challenging. Spamming the same strategy until the sun explodes is not. It's like building the fucking tower in Rohrer's game about immortality: sure you can go on forever, but what for?

For the game to be interesting, there should be a specter of EPIC FAIL looming over the PCs and some actual non-epic failure criteria. For murdering hobos, this is all about not shining as awesomely as you could have been (you die, someone else kills the BBEG). For a group that is more involved in the gaming world, it's failing or delaying the achievement of an RP-related goal (the princess is kidnapped, your lovingly designed home base is in ruins). For a solo game where the single PC has 100% plot armor, it's about the very real possibility of NPC death ("You were tough like you couldn’t die, but we were only human").

Being in the open auto-wins the game. However, that doesn't mean you will spend your entire campaign in the wilderness. In fact, it means quite the reverse: you'll be spending zero real time in the wilderness - that is, unless you want to spit on the game from the top of Rohrer's infinite tower. In fact, here is the link, do it, then come back here and tell us if it was any fun.

Of course the game is neverending and by coming back you'll automatically prove my point.

[Roy]

You do realize that by stating that chilling outside is an auto win, you're making my point about 4.Fail being an incredibly fragile system right?

Not to mention that even breaking it in half is about 'spamming the same strategy until the sun explodes' which is not challenging and is not even interesting. And when something is so fucked up you cannot even derive joy from smashing it with a sledge hammer...

There is no such specter looming over the PCs in 4.Fail. And even if there were, that would not save it.

If you want a game that requires actual effort instead of your sprites auto winning against the other sprites, you play 3.5 or 3.0 or 2.0 or 1.0 or Shadowrun or whatthefuckever, but not 4.Fail.

[violence in the media]

@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.

I just think it's ultra-retarded that a DM who doesn't place every encounter in his campaign on the plains is "railroading". What the fuck? That makes as much sense as putting your aquatic elf character on the bottom of the ocean and saying "lol D&D is fail becuz most monsters can't breathe underwater, I win".

Wait, you've never run or played in a group that explicitly rejected a quest that was presented, for whatever reason? I've played in a group where one of the players had to write up a new PC because the rest of the party refused to go on the "my little sister's been kidnapped!" quest, as one example.

In general, I've experienced a fair amount of quest refusal, as a PC and DM, because the party either didn't feel they were well-suited for the task at hand, or they couldn't figure out why any of their characters would be interested.

Now, I did play in one game where the party was an adventuring guild and we each had 3 characters, so we would assemble appropriate teams by each player picking one of their characters that best fit the mission at hand. In that case, refusing missions didn't really happen, because we could decide how best to approach a problem by tailoring the team to it. That was a pretty awesome game. We had one short adventure where almost every opponent was dispatched from stealth. Good times.

[Starmaker]

You do realize that by stating that chilling outside is an auto win, you're making my point about 4.Fail being an incredibly fragile system right?

Of course. 4.Fail cannot handle noncombat stuff at all because of the pile of shit that is skill challenges and it cannot handle outdoors combat at all because of Mongols. The only part that is playable is indoors combat. (And it sucks cock, being totally bland and uninspiring.)

And that is exactly why forcing the PCs to go into dungeons is not railroading - because if they don't want to go into dungeons, then what the fuck they're doing playing 4.Fail in the first place?

Shadowrun is a (good) game about, well, going on runs despite the option to sit in place and farm nuyen being always open. Call of Cthulhu is a (good) game about investigating the supernatural instead of jumping town to avoid being eaten by Yog-Sothoth. 4.Fail is a (shitty) game about seeing who'll be the last to go play Smash Bros. indoors combat. And it sucks cock for the following reasons:

• it has narrowed the game to indoors combat only
• it is being advertized as having noncombat and outdoors components, which is a lie
• indoors combat is boring.

My point is this: Playing a Mongol in 4.Fail is a dick move, and forcing the party to go into dungeons is not railroading. Whoever agrees to play 4.Fail and doesn't want to go into dungeons is being as much of a dick as someone who signs up for a specific adventure and decides to wander off the map.

Note that the above does not excuse the failures of 4.Fail in any way.

Wait, you've never run or played in a group that explicitly rejected a quest that was presented, for whatever reason?

Quest refusal is not game refusal. Players are supposed to work with the DM to ensure the quest is interesting for everyone. For instance, I can say, "I hate court intrigue, but make this church intrigue and I'll totally play an inquisitor, pretty pretty please ha ha got you there sucker". Quest refusal is "forget the little sister, let's rob the dragon's lair". Some GMs do this sort of unrestricted wandering where you choose quests in-game; I prefer either "What do you guys want to play next Saturday" or "Next time we're playing X and everyone should give a reason for attending". Game refusal is "Fuck adventuring", and horse archery equals game refusal because outdoors combat is not in the fucking game, and any well-designed 4.Fail adventure has to consist of dungeoneering with some magical teaparty thrown in for good measure.

[Roy]

Of course the funny thing is that indoors combat totally fucking eliminates the only possible advantage that can be argued for 4.Fail. Namely, that movement stuff. A 15 * 15 room can be covered by one guy in melee just by standing in the middle, so you don't need to fuck around with the push/pull bullshit at all. You just stand there and say 'I Tide of Iron!' or whatthefuckever for 10+ rounds. Kinda like 'I full attack!' except several times as often. And it was supposed to fix that. Even a bigger room like 30 * 30 can be covered with four... and the expected party size is 5. Hm.

Of course then you just shift to meleeburn linkshells or whatthefuckever and go from there. Or stunlocks. Because they're just sprites, they are easily trivialized. And that's why being smart has to be a bannable offense, otherwise people would stab the shark MOBs from land.

[Hotpants Joe]

I've been out, and I have some catching up to do in responding to certain folks.

Absentminded Wizard: I think you mistook my arguments earlier and I'll get to that.

Frank: I'll post some more skill challenge stuff and try to be more concise, but you probably aren't going to like what I have to say.

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.

The problem here is that A. you're assuming the sorrowsworn even starts 40 squares away from the PCs. But let's assume he does. His teleportation is not only a standard action, but it's a recharge ability (50% chance per round). He could distance himself on foot, but the PCs by that point, if melee, will be able to close distance in a matter of rounds and won't likely be put down on account of being level ~28 themselves.

[Psychic Robot]

Then put him on a skeletal steed, you tool. Or have him fly away.

[Hotpants Joe]

Then put him on a skeletal steed, you tool.

Okay. Steeds have a movement of 10. Assuming the dimensions of the area allow him to retreat on horseback continually, a melee PC with a speed of 5 can still catch up by move action -> move and then standard action -> charge if within 10. If they're not within 10, they're double moving and/or running (+2 squares of movement per move action, take -5 penalty to attack and grant CA, which in this case doesn't matter when you're catching up to a ranged attacker who is attempting to kite you). Don't forget actions points either.

Our horse archer has to double move each couple of rounds and have enough space to do so to maintain his distance.

Or have him fly away.

I guess if the DM wants to be sadistic and set up a fight where the PCs can't win, sure. But that's just stupid and defeats the purpose of the game. And unless you're fighting one of these guys on an open plains, and the DM is actively trying to be a dick by giving him a flying mount and the party happens to have no ranged attacks, this isn't going to be a problem. Give up this argument already. You were wrong.

[Psychic Robot]

No tactics, not strategy, melee attack only, FINAL DESTINATION.

Seriously? You just told me not to use the monster's abilities against the PCs. That's...that's sad.

[Hotpants Joe]

Seriously? You just told me not to use the monster's abilities against the PCs. That's...that's sad.

Instead, be saddened by your own idea that the DM -> Player relationship is adversarial and that the DM should give the Deathlord a powerful ranged weapon and allow it to fly around in an open field and shoot the PCs to death just because he can.

This isn't even a fullproof plan unless the level 28 party has no viable ranged attacks, which is very unlikely. If such is the case, the DM should really question whether or not to have a fight like this occur unless it is to prove a point about knowing when to run away. But why would they want to do this in the first place?

This just sounds like another failed "4e doesn't protect me against bad, asshole DMs!" argument.

[Bill Bisco: Isometric Imp]

Hotpants, in case you didn't notice, I did post some Statistics about Horse Archers' success rate a few pages back.

[Psychic Robot]

Oberoni: the game isn't broken because the DM shouldn't let it be broken!

You are telling me that I can't have flying humanoids with bows in my game because the PCs can't stop them. This indicates that 4e is a terribly designed game, and yet you're blaming it on the DM.

In 3e, there is no problem with this. Characters can fly, teleport, or shoot their ranged weapons hundreds of feet (that would be 75-100 of your "squares," 4rry), and that's before optimizing. And since 3e has actual rules for how to calculate a monster's attack bonus and damage, you're not going to run into the "lol why am I in melee?" problem.

[Hotpants Joe]

In one argument, you said that people should be "roleplaying their characters" instead of using the best tactics. Then, in response to someone's complaints about 4e's lack of support for non-combat, non-dungeon challenges, you basically said that "D&D has always been a combat-centered game."

Are you talking about when I posted about skill challenges with that bolded part? If so, I definitely did not say or imply that a group should roleplaying instead of using perfect tactics. I said that my group, rarely, will do this during a skill challenge in a way that hinders party success.

Unless you're referring to the part where I at most implied that having a team of ranged specialists was bad roleplaying (I actually took this back shortly afterwards), you took what I said completely out of context.

Now, while a combat-centric game is inherently a tactics-centered game too, it is possible for roleplaying to happen even in a combat-centered game. However, you seem to think that roleplaying always means "shooting yourself and your friends in the foot." It doesn't. Roleplaying means giving your character a backstory and personality.

No, I don't. You've taken what I've said out of context. Roleplaying and combat tactics aren't mutually exclusive things and I've said as much.

In a game centered on combat and tactics, the character's personality shouldn't regularly be preventing them from using the best tactics.

You're right, but if it happens occasionally it's not a horrible thing that I would condemn the player for. Which is the case in my groups.

BTW, my apologies. I didn't know I needed to post a treatise on the topic before pointing out general stupidity.

It's okay. Don't be so hard on yourself.

[Hotpants Joe]

Oberoni: the game isn't broken because the DM shouldn't let it be broken!

So you're saying that I'm committing the Oberoni fallacy because I think the DM should use their brain? Interesting.

You are telling me that I can't have flying humanoids with bows in my game because the PCs can't stop them. This indicates that 4e is a terribly designed game, and yet you're blaming it on the DM.

No, I'm saying that a DM shouldn't intentionally set up a fight that the PCs have no hope of winning. It's okay to use tactics to create a challenging combat. I encourage that. What you seem to be suggesting here is that a DM shouldn't have to practice any kind of discretion when setting up encounters and never question the rules in any way. Actually, you're going a step beyond that and saying that because the rules allow for a DM to produce unwinnable battles, that they should, and that the game is broken because of it. That's beyond ridiculous. Take a step back and think about what you're suggesting here.

Edit:

In 3e, there is no problem with this. Characters can fly, teleport, or shoot their ranged weapons hundreds of feet (that would be 75-100 of your "squares," 4rry), and that's before optimizing. And since 3e has actual rules for how to calculate a monster's attack bonus and damage, you're not going to run into the "lol why am I in melee?" problem.

Except it could be a problem if nobody in the party can fly, teleport, or shoot their ranged weapons hundreds of feet/have no ranged weapons. Which is similar to the conditions of this sorrowful deathlord fight scenario being unwinnable, since a party with ranged weapons could fight back, and there is at least one paragon path that grants flying.