The End of 4e D&D.

[areola]

Ok, i read all 3 editions of that ToH encounter. The 4e one seems like a normal roll initiative and fight routine. I like the old AD&D one where you can befriend the Siren and cure idiocy.

[Lago PARANOIA]

Sheesh, is my prose style that obvious?

[Psychic Robot]

With the demographics that 4e caters to, they could never do an actual TOH revamp. I recall reading a thread where people were throwing fits about the possibility of wasting a daily or encounter power on a minion.

[Danchild]

My memory is a little hazy, but I will attempt to use my words and explain my disgust.

The original ToH was a hack tournament module. I believe it was designed to be an endurance competition. A limited play time coupled with pregenerated characters, the objective of the module was simply to see how far a group was able to progress.

My only time playing the module was more of an introductory thing. I would not even try to implement it into a campaign. A short and sweet one off game only.

The actual encounter presented is a poor copy of the original. With the stats presented, it looks as though you can expect one out of 4 party members to be affected by the gas and turn evil.' In 4e this means that they are reduced to one standard action per turn, grant combat advantage and use basic attacks only. The Siren is a typical Solo grind, but not that much of a threat.

The entire encounter can be shut down quickly as long as there are characters possessing the arcana and thievery skills. 2 rolls with better than even odds of success. A bard or warlock can do it themselves in 2 rounds. A rogue working with a wizard can do it in one round. Yawn. Thus it is either trivial or a grind. Even if the Siren is freed from the effect, the encounter description advises only that she fucks off without even so much as a thank you.

It seems that the 4e ToH is a poor attempt to cash in on D&D legacy, whatever that is. Instead of creating a new adventure, or redesigning a decent module, they pick a gonzo tournament module to recreate. From what I have seen it will be worse than the orginal...Yet unlike the original it will be meant to be taken seriously.

[TheFlatline]

However, I have to ask, after hacking through half of said thousand-year-old dungeon filled with eldrich horrors, would you really teleport back to town and give all the baddies a chance to... well... prepare specifically to TPK you?

If they port back to town, then the dungeon will either be ready for them, have killed off/moved the princess, or have vacated the dungeon entirely and left the PCs looking like idiots.

That's exactly what I mean about having to continually resort to contrivances in order to uphold the narrative logic of the multi-encounter workday. Yes, it makes sense that if the adventure is 'storm the castle and rescue the princess' then diddling around won't get the princess rescued. But having to make every single adventure into a timed mission, especially in a game which fetishizes personal power advancement and treasure, is just absurd.

Is it though? 4th edition did away with a large portion of resource management, which was a fundamental portion of the combat side of the game. It still feels like Wizards announced a problem that the people I game with have never seen, and I game with people who have played clear back to the red box days.

The 5 minute workday seems like it's contrived to justify turning the entire resource management system into a World of Warcraft style cooldown timer. I've never heard of the 5 minute workday until 4th edition started to ramp up, and I spent a bunch of time on the WotC boards back in 3.x days.

What's the practical difference in subverting the multi-encounter workday by resting repeatedly or just intentionally dodging all of the encounters?

From a game-balance perspective, there isn't one. Either way you are artificially reducing the workday. The only difference is a narrative one, which has its own problems I already talked about.

By subverting encounters, you're still trapped in the supposed "5 minute workday" problem in 4th ed. In fact, it has the potential to be even worse. This is a problem whenever you give players access to teleport, fly, and anything else that lets you subvert combat. This isn't a 3.x limited resources problem, this is a design issue.

I'm not even sure what you mean by filler encounters.

If the game is balanced on an assumption of players regularly doing X encounters in a day then regularly neglecting to do artificially lowers the difficulty.

The standard response to that is to up the difficulty of the encounters that you do run through. But once you're doing that, why are you even doing 3-5 encounters in a day? As noted, 3-5 encounters a day is artificial and generally doesn't follow how things are done in derivative works. When characters are forced to do it it's so rare that it's often made into a plot point.

You should be planning for regular 1-2 encounter workdays and implementing extra encounters as punishment for bad planning or aggressiveness or just bad luck. Which makes 3E/4E a bad system for not recognizing that the short workday is the correct way to do things.

I guess this is my problem. I introduce encounters according to where it fits in the story, not how many per day are needed. Sometimes I have 2-3 (and not even large, deadly encounters, just encounters), sometimes I have 5-6, sometimes I have 10 or more. Generally, in the interest of telling a story and having a good time, the PCs know when they're about to walk into a clusterfuck day and can prepare appropriately.

but since the players are heroes, how often *should* they have that kind of initiative?

If the choice is risking an easily-avoidable TPK or doing yet another in a string of dumb adventures, you should not be startled that the fact that a lot of parties will decide that risking their lives to save one princess when the orc armies are mobilizing to the south and the dwarves dug too deep to the north is not a wise one.

Then why bother playing? You make a fantastic argument to not even bother playing the game.

Okay I'm going to abbreviate everything else that's been written down to one thing.

You still haven't shown me how the 5 minute workday concept is a real "problem" worthy of completely redesigning one of the oldest core mechanics of D&D and changing it into a WoW-style cooldown timer. At best I see a minor issue that is easily rectified by a DM who knows his shit. At worst I see a problem invented to explain a drastic change in the game made to appeal to video game junkies who don't give a shit about TTRPGs anyway. Considering that from the get-go the designers stated they wanted to attract WoW players and other MMO gamers, evidence suggests that the 5 minute workday is vastly blown out of proportion to justify changing core mechanics.

[areola]

Well, to me the healing surges are the biggest sinners. Suddenly the fighter can't go on even if there is a lake of healing potion next to him.

At least back then we could tell the wizard to shut up and grab a crossbow.

The next D&D Encounters event has Dark Sun adventure where it is made up of 3 chapters of 5 encounters each chapter. Players cannot take an extended rest between the 5 encounters. So either the last 5th encounter will end up all PCs blowing up their dailies or grinding with at-wills, or probably dead in the first place.

[areola]

It seems that the 4e ToH is a poor attempt to cash in on D&D legacy, whatever that is. Instead of creating a new adventure, or redesigning a decent module, they pick a gonzo tournament module to recreate. From what I have seen it will be worse than the orginal...Yet unlike the original it will be meant to be taken seriously.

Yea. I can't think of any good adventures from WOTC and even the so called best, Red Hand of Doom was made by one of the Paizo guys. TOH was made for the AD&D system.

Oh and the guy who wrote that 4e TOH doesn't know how to houserule.

[Kaelik]

Flatline, you are confused.

Lago is not defending 4e or anything. He is saying there is a problem with the four encounter workday, not the 5 minute workday, and that the five minute workday only exists because people refuse to see the problem with the four encounter workday.

He's not saying that 4e fixed the problem, because it didn't.

[TheWorid]

Very interesting list. I can identify line items in it written by Lago, Roy, and even myself. Where is it from?

It looks like the old 1d4chan 4E page to me. That section was deleted not too long ago.

[Doom]

Indeed, Zagamov (or something like that) went on a 6 week campaign of terror to have it removed, admin finally gave in.

[RobbyPants]

Is it though? 4th edition did away with a large portion of resource management, which was a fundamental portion of the combat side of the game. It still feels like Wizards announced a problem that the people I game with have never seen, and I game with people who have played clear back to the red box days.

The 5 minute workday seems like it's contrived to justify turning the entire resource management system into a World of Warcraft style cooldown timer. I've never heard of the 5 minute workday until 4th edition started to ramp up, and I spent a bunch of time on the WotC boards back in 3.x days.

Back on the WotC boards, I remember people complaining about it, although they usually called it the 15 minute work day. It was typically brought up complaining about the Rope Trick spell. About once a month or so, someone would post how their players were abusing this tactic, and all of the posters would give random advice on how to deal with this.

If you've never encountered it before, then you've never played with people who like to use most of their spells in one fight, rest, get them all back, and repeat. You can argue about that going against the spirit of the game, but sadly, it's what the mechanics have encouraged since OD&D. It's just back in OD&D days, it was more fashionable for DMs to punish players for this type of behavior in the spectacularly heavy-handed Gygaxian style!

About the best way I found to mitigate the problem in 2E/3E was to have a looming threat of other encounters to keep casters from using all their spell slots. That, and my some miracle, my players never discovered Rope Trick.

[Danchild]

The thing about spellcasters is that they allow the 5 minute workday to actually be a successful tactic. Teleportation or rope trick allows for an immediate 'safe'zone.

A party without a spellcaster has to slog it back to town and hope they don't meet anything nasty along the way.

The end result is probably the same, in that the group is able to recover resources (hp, spells, ability points, healing surges or whatever), the spellcasters just make it more expedient. The down side of that expedience is the potential for abuse. I certainly don't begrudge players for having their characters rest and heal up.

This has always been a problem in games I have run (even 4e), though I have found that an engaging plot, time limits and adjusting combat encounters helps deal with it somewhat. Having enemy casters use similar tactics encouraged some of the guys I DMed for to modify that kind of behaviour. YMMV.

[Lago PARANOIA]

So like Kaelik pointed out, is anyone going to point the finger at the actual fucking culprit or are we going to continue to blame the maladaptive behavior for the maladaptive behavior?

Jesus tittyfucking Christ. Just ditch the 4-encounter workday already. It's like pulling teeth with safety scissors here.

[souran]

So like Kaelik pointed out, is anyone going to point the finger at the actual fucking culprit or are we going to continue to blame the maladaptive behavior for the maladaptive behavior?

Jesus tittyfucking Christ. Just ditch the 4-encounter workday already. It's like pulling teeth with safety scissors here.

I have to say I agree with Lago, the problem is that ANY "workday" concept leads to a situation where you could blow all your best abilities in one encounter to make it massively easier.


Then without pressing time issue there is no reason NOT to take the time to get those powers back. Its clearly stupid NOT to do this.

So ditch the work X encounter workday entirely, and push all the games abilties to a per combat basis.
Actually for 4e this is a travial task. Just switch the games "daily powers" to "one of these per encounter" powers.

[RobbyPants]

I agree too. I was just pointing out to Flatline that this did indeed exist before 4E.

[K]

The thing about spellcasters is that they allow the 5 minute workday to actually be a successful tactic. Teleportation or rope trick allows for an immediate 'safe'zone.

A party without a spellcaster has to slog it back to town and hope they don't meet anything nasty along the way.

That's fail logic, because if you might run into encounters on the way back to town, you are better off finding a way to rest before you walk back.... so you are still resting whenever you meaningfully deplete your powers rather than pushing forward. I mean, walking back after you've depleted all your powers means that if you run into someone you are screwed.

Without teleportation and other various auto-rest powers, people will just spike the doors closed in a room and rest that way.

[angelfromanotherpin]

Yeah, but a spiked door is much easier for a wide range of enemies to deal with than a teleport withdrawal or a rope trick hideout. In a lot of places, it's very plausible that a door may well be broken down or otherwise bypassed by the hostile forces you're trying to take out by nova-bursting one group every eight hours.

[TheFlatline]

So like Kaelik pointed out, is anyone going to point the finger at the actual fucking culprit or are we going to continue to blame the maladaptive behavior for the maladaptive behavior?

Jesus tittyfucking Christ. Just ditch the 4-encounter workday already. It's like pulling teeth with safety scissors here.

Oh I agree with ditching the concept of the 4-encounter workday completely.

The way I always understood that, it was advice to the DM that 4 encounters on level with your party will tap them out, so plan accordingly. I never took it as a gospel "you need to have 4 encounters a day", because that is silly.

And the above poster was right. I *was* missing what you were saying. My apologies.

[TheFlatline]

If you've never encountered it before, then you've never played with people who like to use most of their spells in one fight, rest, get them all back, and repeat. You can argue about that going against the spirit of the game, but sadly, it's what the mechanics have encouraged since OD&D. It's just back in OD&D days, it was more fashionable for DMs to punish players for this type of behavior in the spectacularly heavy-handed Gygaxian style!

About the best way I found to mitigate the problem in 2E/3E was to have a looming threat of other encounters to keep casters from using all their spell slots. That, and my some miracle, my players never discovered Rope Trick.

Again, it's something that generally can be handled by an intelligent DM and doesn't require a fucking ground-up redesign of resource management.

And you're right. In 17 years or so of gaming with perhaps hundreds of players over the years (D&D being a constant throughout) I've never played in a single game where someone blows all their resources every encounter because they figure they'll just Rope Trick or port back to town.

I think most of the groups I have played with or ran would bitch the spellcaster or the other problem player out for making the game incredibly boring at that point. God forbid what the DM would do to such cowards. It wouldn't be pretty that's for sure.

I can't imagine that it's that prevalent of a problem really. Certainly not enough of one to justify the actions that 4th ed took.

[TheFlatline]

So ditch the work X encounter workday entirely, and push all the games abilties to a per combat basis.
Actually for 4e this is a travial task. Just switch the games "daily powers" to "one of these per encounter" powers.

This completely destroys the resource management aspect of the game, which is, essentially, what spellcasters boiled down to, and most other classes had touches of here and there.

What do you propose you replace resource management with? You've eliminated perhaps a third of the challenge of D&D, and haven't replaced it with any equivalent challenges. You've just made the game easier.

I mean shit... If you want to be really literal, hitpoints are the ultimate "workday" limiter. Should we simply do away with hitpoints? Or create hitpoints per encounter and do away with persistent damage?

You want to break the 5 minute workday? Simple. You give an XP bonus for each subsequent fight after the first that you take before resting in 5% increments, up to say 15% per encounter after your 4th encounter. You retain resource management, but you give an incentive to players to keep pushing on, until they have to balance that extra 15% (and the BBEG fight will probably be the most XP, so that 15% will mean the most there), vs getting party wiped.

Maybe an XP bonus would be overbalancing (you'd have to skew the XP progression a bit to make up for it), but the idea that you reward players mechanically for pushing on makes far more sense than redesigning one of the core aspects of the game.

[Roy]

The "point" of the Tarrasque (such that there ever was a point), was that it was an unstoppable juggernaut that could only be slowed down, and even then not by much. The 4e Tarrasque, while probably infinity times more dangerous to party members because of its earthbinding aura, can be stopped by a couple of 3rd level halfling outriders. It will take them a long time, because they have to chew through Resist 10 and 1420 hitpoints - but as mounted archers they actually can just keep moving ahead of it and throwing rocks. It'll take like 7 hours, but they can do it.

Meaning that the basic Tarrasque adventure of "OMGWTF the Tarrasque is coming to destroy our town and the militia cannot stop it!" is toast. The militia just needs two guys, two horses, and two bows. The problem is solved before the sun sets, so the PCs don't even have a chance to show up.

Well in all fairness, the Tarrasque has never worked, in any edition.

The 4E one is probably the most successful one. I mean sure, while horse archers may be able to stop it eventually, it's trampled your city to dust by then. It can also burrow with a speed of 8, meaning it can pretty much just go right through the ground if you start harassing it with arrows and burst up in the midst of the city.

Also remember that epic creatures get 3 healing surges per day, and that's quite a bit of healing.

Also because this is 4E and it doesn't really make sense, the Tarrasque also has a very high stealth score (+23 base dex check) meaning it could pretty much gain cover from some trees in the forest and sneak up on people.

Compared to the 3E and prior edition Tarrasque which was beaten by like.. anyone with flight, the 4E Tarrasque is relatively dangerous.

This... actually reminds me of a nerd rage rant I need to do.

[DragonChild]

There's also the problem that assuming, and balancing the game around 4 encounters per day screws over the people who only want 1, or as many as 8 encounters per day.

[TheFlatline]

There's also the problem that assuming, and balancing the game around 4 encounters per day screws over the people who only want 1, or as many as 8 encounters per day.

I've never found it to be a problem running a game. If there's only one or two encounters in a given day, the players thank their lucky stars that they had an easy day of it (unless it was a brutal encounter). If there's 8 encounters, I take into account that they have limited resources and plan accordingly, giving the players options other than "I fireball it" to be effective/survive.

It's not difficult. I tend to present two types of encounters: encounters that *require* spells and resources, and encounters that, in theory, don't with some intelligent play. You *can* use resources to make the second type of encounters go smoother, but that's a player's choice. If there's an encounter that requires significant resources later, they're making that encounter harder by making their current encounter easier.

[souran]

[

And you're right. In 17 years or so of gaming with perhaps hundreds of players over the years (D&D being a constant throughout) I've never played in a single game where someone blows all their resources every encounter because they figure they'll just Rope Trick or port back to town.

I think most of the groups I have played with or ran would bitch the spellcaster or the other problem player out for making the game incredibly boring at that point. God forbid what the DM would do to such cowards. It wouldn't be pretty that's for sure.

I can't imagine that it's that prevalent of a problem really. Certainly not enough of one to justify the actions that 4th ed took.

Wow, that incredible.

When I was first learning the game that is how I was TAUGHT to play. Casters didn't hold back they used what they had and if it took 2 spells then so be it, the next thing was to rest. Carrying the requiste spikes, knowning how to set camp even in a dungeon enviroment and figuring out how long the fighters can go without sleep in order to let casters get the 8 hours were as basic as marching orders or searching for traps.

I remember the first time we did ravenloft we used a rop trick or one of the lemonds things from a scroll right outside of the door to strahd. It was from a story persepective really stupid. However, nobody wanted to fight strahd at less than full everything.

Really, 17 YEARS and you never delt with players blowing their whole wad in one or 2 encounters and calling it a day?

It was a huge problem a problem and that you have not seen it is mind boggleing.

[TheFlatline]

Wow, that incredible.

When I was first learning the game that is how I was TAUGHT to play. Casters didn't hold back they used what they had and if it took 2 spells then so be it, the next thing was to rest. Carrying the requiste spikes, knowning how to set camp even in a dungeon enviroment and figuring out how long the fighters can go without sleep in order to let casters get the 8 hours were as basic as marching orders or searching for traps.

I remember the first time we did ravenloft we used a rop trick or one of the lemonds things from a scroll right outside of the door to strahd. It was from a story persepective really stupid. However, nobody wanted to fight strahd at less than full everything.

Really, 17 YEARS and you never delt with players blowing their whole wad in one or 2 encounters and calling it a day?

It was a huge problem a problem and that you have not seen it is mind boggleing.

I guess I've never played with people who gamed the mechanics. We would try to roleplay what would make sense for our characters to do, not what made the best mechanical sense. Even the munchkins and min/maxers would progress "in character" after char gen.

As for rope tricks and teleports, I have a litany of things that a moderately accomplished spellcaster could do that could either screw over or TPK a party who has given up situational awareness that have nothing to do with pressing time limits. I suspect after two or three attempts any party trying that shit would be heavily discouraged if they just decided in the middle of the dungeon/whatever to port to safety to rest.

Then again, I *am* the DM who TPK'd four fifth level characters with two orcs, a crossbow, and some greek fire.