The Official "4e Critique and Rebuttal" Thread

[Winnah]

Jumping into the conclusion of a line of discussion without acknowledging the topic make you feel intelligent?

I asked a question. That makes me feel curious and open minded. The fact that I bothered to respond at all should be an indication of my intelligence.

The suggestions in the DMG that I am talking about are if the standard Level encounter budget is too easy for your party. It explains making challenges up to Level + 4 for both challenge and variance. So, system as intended.

A disingenuous statement. The encounter guidelines in the DMG states that a party should face only one such challenge per level and not at early levels. It also suggests thowing in an encounter of level -2 every level. Obviously this is not as you would say, 'system as intended.'

In fact, page 31-33 of the DMG has some guidelines for dealing with problems in a game. The suggestion for dealing with powerful characters is to take their magic items away. Not my opinion, but the actual guidelines from the book. Your character is successful, they have their toys taken away so the other players don't feel small in the pants. System as intended.

[Koumei]

Thanks, although I'm kind of sad the forum software can't deal with that.

We all are - Zherog most of all!

[Fuchs]

Koumei, I just read what you wrote again and you do realize that the monsters don't actually exist, right? It's all made up by the DM, the monsters never have to congregate in a room because they're in our heads.

Look, not everyone skips all the story parts and just throws bags of hp and powers mixed up "appropriately" at the party to grind on. Some of us like to play in games where monsters and NPCs act as if they existed, and not as if they were WoW mobs with a bad AI.

If a pack of goblins, a dark elf and one harpy attack my party I better have a reason ready for why those work together, or all I am doing is providing my friends with a cheap shadow of MMOG "Gameplay" where one clicks through the quest dialogue since it doesn't matter, is shitty and stupid, or both.

[Fuchs]

If the players can actually deal with the harpies dropping rocks on the player, why would you put the encounter in? It's not particularly interesting (the wizard has some options, but everyone else just pulls out their secondary weapon and starts doing basic attacks), it doesn't seem like it would do a particularly good job of moving the story along (running forces them somewhere, fighting just keeps them where they were with some bodies around them and a little less health).

By that logic we can skip just about every encounter, since those are meant to be able to handled by the party.

Does that mean you skip every encounter while playing 4E, given that it's so boringly easy?

[Roxolan]

Every 4E class contributes meaningfully, barring contrived scenarios. Yay for repeating myself.

Experience tells me otherwise. Unless you mean that a meaningful contribution does not have to be equal or particularly useful.

Not equal? Yes, that's what I've been explicitly saying for the last three posts. Not useful? No, and you're going to have to support your claim with more than undefined anecdotal evidence.

Koumei, I just read what you wrote again and you do realize that the monsters don't actually exist, right? It's all made up by the DM, the monsters never have to congregate in a room because they're in our heads.

Look, not everyone skips all the story parts and just throws bags of hp and powers mixed up "appropriately" at the party to grind on. Some of us like to play in games where monsters and NPCs act as if they existed, and not as if they were WoW mobs with a bad AI.

If a pack of goblins, a dark elf and one harpy attack my party I better have a reason ready for why those work together, or all I am doing is providing my friends with a cheap shadow of MMOG "Gameplay" where one clicks through the quest dialogue since it doesn't matter, is shitty and stupid, or both.

This isn't incompatible with what Novembermike said. You don't suddenly stop world-building because your encounter isn't Goblin Warrior x5.

(And if you can't or don't want to make up an environment where drows, harpies and goblins work together, use the magic of reskinning to make them all drows.)

I can only assume that you're pointing out how "In 4E, the monsters don't actually exist out of combat, they spring into existence for the fight, with no connection to the world, then exist to get killed" and are using sarcasm and satire here. Because that does come across as a pretty good highlight of part of the stupidity of the assumed setting and the monster design, yes.

If you're seriously saying "Monsters only exist when the MC says they do, so they really should exist in a way that suits the party perfectly! Just because the sign says 'Warning: a continent-sized dragon lives over there' doesn't mean there should be one until the PCs are high enough level - if they go there at level 5 then there's only a bright red lizard about a foot long" then you are dangerously retarded and should go have a lie down. Because that describes an awful game design and world design that makes no fucking sense and would be terrible to play in.

Obviously you don't. You create the party's environment and plot hooks to ensure that they won't have any reason to randomly attack the giant dragon, but if they still do, they die. Players don't get to survive impaling themselves on their swords either. In both cases, there is something very very wrong with the group, and you don't solve that just by saying their swords turn to rubber before wounding them.

If the players can actually deal with the harpies dropping rocks on the player, why would you put the encounter in? It's not particularly interesting (the wizard has some options, but everyone else just pulls out their secondary weapon and starts doing basic attacks), it doesn't seem like it would do a particularly good job of moving the story along (running forces them somewhere, fighting just keeps them where they were with some bodies around them and a little less health).

By that logic we can skip just about every encounter, since those are meant to be able to handled by the party.

Does that mean you skip every encounter while playing 4E, given that it's so boringly easy?

Oh come on, are you willfully misinterpreting his logic? The harpy attack forces 80% of that hypothetical party to sit on their thumbs. That is why it's unsuitable for that party. I have no idea how you get to the conclusion that no encounter is suitable.

[Fuchs]

If the players can actually deal with the harpies dropping rocks on the player, why would you put the encounter in? It's not particularly interesting (the wizard has some options, but everyone else just pulls out their secondary weapon and starts doing basic attacks), it doesn't seem like it would do a particularly good job of moving the story along (running forces them somewhere, fighting just keeps them where they were with some bodies around them and a little less health).

By that logic we can skip just about every encounter, since those are meant to be able to handled by the party.

Does that mean you skip every encounter while playing 4E, given that it's so boringly easy?

Oh come on, are you willfully misinterpreting his logic? The harpy attack forces 80% of that hypothetical party to sit on their thumbs. That is why it's unsuitable for that party. I have no idea how you get to the conclusion that no encounter is suitable.

Read the bolded part. He said that if the party can deal with the encounter he is wondering why one would put it in. And his reasoning does make one wonder why he'd play at all, since "fighting just keeps them where they were with some bodies around them and a little less health" applies to just about every 4E encounter.

[Roxolan]

Read the bolded part. He said that if the party can deal with the encounter he is wondering why one would put it in. And his reasoning does make one wonder why he'd play at all, since "fighting just keeps them where they were with some bodies around them and a little less health" applies to just about every 4E encounter.

Oh, I see. I just assumed it was a mistype on his part. Maybe Novembermike can clarify.

[Starmaker]

(And if you can't or don't want to make up an environment where drows, harpies and goblins work together, use the magic of reskinning to make them all drows.)

Duuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuude.

In combat, players should make informed decisions when choosing their next action. If everything I see is colored squares (with hidden stats), I'll be either attacking them randomly or using stochastic analysis to actually determine stats (4e combat length allows for it). Neither of these is even remotely related to roleplaying.

For actual roleplaying to happen, you want to know that harpies can fly under their own power, that drow are dextrous and use poison, that goblins are weak and like to gang up on people. That means NO RECOLORS. If every battle is with five identical monsters, the game gets boring. But if there's a battle with five goblins, two of which are secretly fiendish giant space hamsters, one is a common housefly, and one is an elite Ascendant Darkshadowlord, the game is retarded.

[MGuy]

No the game is an MMO where palette swapping is par for the course.

[Fuchs]

Read the bolded part. He said that if the party can deal with the encounter he is wondering why one would put it in. And his reasoning does make one wonder why he'd play at all, since "fighting just keeps them where they were with some bodies around them and a little less health" applies to just about every 4E encounter.

Oh, I see. I just assumed it was a mistype on his part. Maybe Novembermike can clarify.

That a bunch of flying enemies can neuter 80% of a party is not a sign of a good game. Giant birds, harpies, dragons, flying fiends - all those are stock foes in fantasy, and in D&D.

[Roxolan]

(And if you can't or don't want to make up an environment where drows, harpies and goblins work together, use the magic of reskinning to make them all drows.)

Duuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuude.

In combat, players should make informed decisions when choosing their next action. If everything I see is colored squares (with hidden stats), I'll be either attacking them randomly or using stochastic analysis to actually determine stats (4e combat length allows for it). Neither of these is even remotely related to roleplaying.

For actual roleplaying to happen, you want to know that harpies can fly under their own power, that drow are dextrous and use poison, that goblins are weak and like to gang up on people. That means NO RECOLORS. If every battle is with five identical monsters, the game gets boring. But if there's a battle with five goblins, two of which are secretly fiendish giant space hamsters, one is a common housefly, and one is an elite Ascendant Darkshadowlord, the game is retarded.

Well obviously if you reskin your harpy as a drow, the drow doesn't have invisible wings. He'll react the way a levitating drow would. This is the advantage that TTRPGs have over CRPGs, after all, there's a DM to make rulings for actions beyond full attack/at-will spam.

Though if reskinning bothers you so much, you don't have to do it. I mentioned it as an alternative to figuring out a reason for drows & harpies to work together, or to using only single-race encounters.

[Fuchs]

That still doesn't solve the main problem - a game shouldn't have to ban flying enemies.

[Winnah]

Not equal? Yes, that's what I've been explicitly saying for the last three posts. Not useful? No, and you're going to have to support your claim with more than undefined anecdotal evidence.

Your own definition of meaningful contribution is that every character reduces the length/risk of a combat. That is false. The more characters in an encounter, the more challenging the encounter becomes. It's in the DMG.

You previously said that the warlock was a contrived example of a useless character. Here are a few more examples you can dismiss as irrelevant or anecdotal.

Light armoured, Halfling Fighters fail at being defenders. Or strikers. Their role is to soak up the healing.

Pacifist Shielding Clerics can heal all all day, but in piddling amounts. They can't keep up with the damage put out by monsters after a few rounds. What''s more, they become a liability once there are only bloodied monsters left on the field.

Outside of niche CharOp builds, Battleminds can't even lock monsters down. I've only ever seen them get drawn into getting flanked and gleefully curbstomped by brutes and soldiers.

Beast Druids are poor, single-target controllers. Their low hp and defences makes melee range a stupid place to be.

All are characters from games I have run or played in. They were all conceptually cool, but dangerously failed to meet the expectations of the player or other members of the group. Hence useless. Feel free to quibble about semantics.

[Kaelik]

If the players can actually deal with the harpies dropping rocks on the player, why would you put the encounter in? It's not particularly interesting (the wizard has some options, but everyone else just pulls out their secondary weapon and starts doing basic attacks), it doesn't seem like it would do a particularly good job of moving the story along (running forces them somewhere, fighting just keeps them where they were with some bodies around them and a little less health).

You put it in good games, like 3e, because it's not boring. That's why you have most fights in 3e, because they are not boring. And you have it be a set of harpies, because that's a common encounter when assaulting a fortress that happens to be up in the mountains where harpies are.

Do you also not allow Solo Dragons to fly in 4e? I mean, wtf is wrong with you?

Maybe the fact that a perfectly normal encounter that exists in fiction, makes perfect sense, is easily duplicable in every single version of D&D since it began to exist, and is actually an explicit encounter in 2e and 3e modules is "contrived" and makes for boring gameplay in 4e, but not 2e or 3e, is evidence that your edition is terribad.

[Roxolan]

Your own definition of meaningful contribution is that every character reduces the length/risk of a combat. That is false. The more characters in an encounter, the more challenging the encounter becomes. It's in the DMG.

For a character to have a meaningful contribution, he must make the same encounter significantly easier/faster. Not make a group-size-appropriate encounter easier/faster, because that definition is stupid and useless as I've explained three times now.

You previously said that the warlock was a contrived example of a useless character.

To clarify, it was just a random class. A crazy optimized party based on abusing a rule loophole might prevent an additional character (from any class) from making a meaningful contribution.

Light armoured, Halfling Fighters fail at being defenders. Or strikers. Their role is to soak up the healing.

Pacifist Shielding Clerics can heal all all day, but in piddling amounts. They can't keep up with the damage put out by monsters after a few rounds. What''s more, they become a liability once there are only bloodied monsters left on the field.

Outside of niche CharOp builds, Battleminds can't even lock monsters down. I've only ever seen them get drawn into getting flanked and gleefully curbstomped by brutes and soldiers.

Beast Druids are poor, single-target controllers. Their low hp and defences makes melee range a stupid place to be.

All are characters from games I have run or played in. They were all conceptually cool, but dangerously failed to meet the expectations of the player or other members of the group. Hence useless. Feel free to quibble about semantics.

Thank you, I will. If you removed one of these from the group (keeping the same encounter difficulty), would it make no real difference? Unless they stupidly chose not to boost their primary ability score (reliance on ability scores in one of 4E's weaknesses), they should still be able to do non-trivial amount of damages (or healing in the case of the pacifist priest) - and without 3E's save-or-dies, damage matters at every level. Out of combat, they should still have way more utility than any 3E non-caster, between the broad skills and the various utility powers (and rituals for some).

[Fuchs]

If you add another character to a party of 5, then the encounters has to be adjusted so it's appropriate (in theory) for a party of 6.

Also, a 3E rogue has way more utility outside combat than any 4E character thanks to skills and gear such as scrolls. I'd expect 4E to at least rise all character's out of combat utility to the level of a rogue.

[Roy]

Mass of stupidity.

Look we know you don't have the ability to engage people in an actual argument you can stop proving it over and over.

Displacement (psychological).

Look it up fuckwit.

[Roxolan]

If you add another character to a party of 5, then the encounters has to be adjusted so it's appropriate (in theory) for a party of 6.

You're missing the point. We're not trying to make a balanced encounter, we're trying to evaluate whether a character can meaningfully contribute to a combat.

Also, a 3E rogue has way more utility outside combat than any 4E character thanks to skills and gear such as scrolls. I'd expect 4E to at least rise all character's out of combat utility to the level of a rogue.

Any 4E character can train at least as many skills as a 3E rogue, and often more. This is partly because most 4E skill are the equivalent of two to four 3E skills. I admit that a 3E non-caster with UMD and a shitload of scrolls can have more utility than a 4E character, but calling that a non-caster is semantics.

[Fuchs]

Your own definition of meaningful contribution is that every character reduces the length/risk of a combat. That is false. The more characters in an encounter, the more challenging the encounter becomes. It's in the DMG.

For a character to have a meaningful contribution, he must make the same encounter significantly easier/faster. Not make a group-size-appropriate encounter easier/faster, because that definition is stupid and useless as I've explained three times now.

And you've been wrong. The game assumes that any party will face group-size-appropriate encounters. Not adding more monsters to an encounter after you added more PCs than it was meant for is not following the game rules - and the same as nerfing the monsters without increasing party-size.

[Roy]

ITT: A whole bunch of people admit that 4.Fail enemies are MMO mobs, while not admitting they are MMO mobs and denying the same, using "hundreds of thousands" religious style logic to somehow handle this blatant contradiction. They also support Dungeon Scaling, which means they Fail At Life forever.

Also, the game breaks if MOBs do normal things, like fly. But we already knew that.

So, has anyone brought up horse archers recently? Pewpewpew... I'm in your grind game, soloing your MOBs.

[violence in the media]

I'm still kind of floored by the notion that you shouldn't put an encounter with a dragon focused on strafing attacks, or a roc that behaves as described, into a game just because the PCs are a bunch of DMFs.

[Fuchs]

If you add another character to a party of 5, then the encounters has to be adjusted so it's appropriate (in theory) for a party of 6.

You're missing the point. We're not trying to make a balanced encounter, we're trying to evaluate whether a character can meaningfully contribute to a combat.

Also, a 3E rogue has way more utility outside combat than any 4E character thanks to skills and gear such as scrolls. I'd expect 4E to at least rise all character's out of combat utility to the level of a rogue.

Any 4E character can train at least as many skills as a 3E rogue, and often more. This is partly because most 4E skill are the equivalent of two to four 3E skills. I admit that a 3E non-caster with UMD and a shitload of scrolls can have more utility than a 4E character, but calling that a non-caster is semantics.

Meaningful contribution means carrying their weight. Since encounters are adjusted for party-size we use such encounters to check if a character is not carrying its weight compared to other characters with the same role.

One fundamental problem with 4E is that it nerfed the out of combat utility of all characters accross the book. Instead of raising the utility of all characters to (at least) the 3E rogue level.

Also, skills in 4E are supposed to msotly be used in Skill Challenges, and I think no one with a shred of honesty left and at least basic understanding of math will claim that the Skill Challenges are working in 4E, which means skills take a hit.

[Fuchs]

I'm still kind of floored by the notion that you shouldn't put an encounter with a dragon focused on strafing attacks, or a roc that behaves as described, into a game just because the PCs are a bunch of DMFs.

Well, MMOG strikes again. (Dumb and boring) melee combat uber alles. Dragons have to sit and take it, and even "flying" monsters are rushing into melee range all the time, just hovering sort of. God help the game if monsters would decide to kite.

[Roy]

I'm still kind of floored by the notion that you shouldn't put an encounter with a dragon focused on strafing attacks, or a roc that behaves as described, into a game just because the PCs are a bunch of DMFs.

Don't you know? You should make one character sheet, as narrow as possible, even by 4.Fail standards and make copies for everyone, and have the group play that. Not only will such be better than a so called balanced party to begin with, but you'll never say... encounter fliers as an all melee party. Dungeon Scaling for the fucking win!

[Roxolan]

Your own definition of meaningful contribution is that every character reduces the length/risk of a combat. That is false. The more characters in an encounter, the more challenging the encounter becomes. It's in the DMG.

For a character to have a meaningful contribution, he must make the same encounter significantly easier/faster. Not make a group-size-appropriate encounter easier/faster, because that definition is stupid and useless as I've explained three times now.

And you've been wrong. The game assumes that any party will face group-size-appropriate encounters. Not adding more monsters to an encounter after you added more PCs than it was meant for is not following the game rules - and the same as nerfing the monsters without increasing party-size.

You are missing the point and I'm getting tired of repeating myself. This is not about normal gameplay. We're trying to determine if a character is a meaningful help to the party. To do so, we examine how a group would fare against the same encounter with or without him and see if there's a noticeable difference. As I've been saying, if you also add a monster then you're instead measuring whether the character is more or less powerful than the party average, which is a completely different question. It is inevitable that some characters will be less powerful than the party average, but in a well-designed game there shouldn't be a class that can't meaningfully contribute. Goddamn, how complicated is that?