4e is out of ideas

[Seerow]

Really, no table top game can be directly converted to a video game without directly replicating the turn-based structure. That was tried in TOEE and D&D:Tactics but they weren't particularly fun or successful.

Personally I'd love a 4e video game in the style of FFT, Tactics Ogre, etc. Unfortunately the chances of getting one are slim.

[Josh_Kablack]

Except none of that is actually true. I mean, call it boring if you wish, but in 4E that sort of thing does have an effect on the combat.

Which part exactly isn't true? The part where I say it's nearly meaningless or the part where I say that's not the same as totally meaningless?

My contention is that small amounts of forced movement are of very minor utility due to how infrequently the situations where they can meaningful come up in actual play. Now, I'm actually playing 4e tomorrow, so I'll track the number of attacks PCs make and the number of attacks where adding 1 square of forced movement could have been used to set up flanking or force an opponent over a cliff or other terrain hazard. I'll be shocked if it's as high as 1-in-5 and would venture a guess that it's less than half that.

[Dog Quixote]

When I've played defenders I've used forced movement all the time, even if only to round monsters up or to keep them under control. I've used it to push monsters away so that I can move to a more advantageous position without taking opportunity attacks.

I've also used it to push dazed or prone monsters into positions where they're unable to make an attack or to break grabs on allies. I've even used it at times to move immobilized allies into a position where they won't be forced to waste their turns.

And there's been lots of times when we've pushed monsters off small hills, buildings, into larva pits, at one point I took out an elite by bushing him off a parapet on a tall building.

I've lots of criticisms of 4E, but the prevalence of forced movement isn't one of them.[/code]

[Seerow]

My guess is it's highly campaign dependent, but my experience was the same as DQ and Krakatoa, that the abundance of forced movement came up a lot when I played 4e, and I loved it. Pulling and Sliding seemed a little strange for non-magic classes, but in general the forced movement added a lot imo.

[Krakatoa]

My contention is that small amounts of forced movement are of very minor utility due to how infrequently the situations where they can meaningful come up in actual play.

Right, and I don't think that's the case because while 'knock them into the abyss' is not a common scenario, even one square can change the dynamics of the fight by letting someone hit with a daily thanks to CA or get them close enough to a defender for a mark. It doesn't have the same effect on the game that, say, 3.x save-or-lose spells do, but it's not insignificant. And as Seerow said, it's probably campaign dependent to some degree, as well as dependent on the class make-up of the party.

Personally I'd love a 4e video game in the style of FFT, Tactics Ogre, etc. Unfortunately the chances of getting one are slim.

Yeah, that seems like a cultural thing. The Japanese make those two, and also stuff like Fire Emblem, Disgaea, probably a few I'm not thinking of.

Meanwhile in the western world the genre is largely developed in the form of mid-to-low budget PC games and apparently they don't think it would bring in the numbers Hasbro needs to notice it on the bottom line. So we get solid MMOs like DDO and bad hack-and-slash games like Daggerdale instead.

Now that I think about it, that facebook Heroes of Neverwinter game uses a very pared down version of the 4E ruleset. I haven't really played enough of it to know if it's worth the time sink and selling your information though. (I'm guessing no.)

[jadagul]

On the push-pull thing, I suspect it depends on how creative the DM is with terrain. If you're fighting on a featureless plain it probably doesn't matter much. If you're fighting on the wandering planets in the elemental chaos that Gabe of Penny Arcade set up it matters a lot.

[ModelCitizen]

My contention is that small amounts of forced movement are of very minor utility due to how infrequently the situations where they can meaningful come up in actual play. Now, I'm actually playing 4e tomorrow, so I'll track the number of attacks PCs make and the number of attacks where adding 1 square of forced movement could have been used to set up flanking or force an opponent over a cliff or other terrain hazard. I'll be shocked if it's as high as 1-in-5 and would venture a guess that it's less than half that.

Forced movement would work better if it were more infrequent, and bigger. The bigger and more deliberate the movement is, the more likely the target is moving to something. A game without minis can handle "I throw the dude into the fire" a lot better than "I throw the dude five feet."

It seems like a no-brainer to get rid of micro-movements players don't care about and just do because it's free, but making the movements bigger when the players do care could actually make them easier to resolve.

Pulling and Sliding seemed a little strange for non-magic classes, but in general the forced movement added a lot imo.

Come and Get It is infamously stupid, but it doesn't seem hard to justify sliding or dragging an enemy in melee. Is the problem that martial pulling/sliding is inherently dissociated, or is it that the 4e writers just didn't take the time to make them make sense?

[hogarth]

Personally I'd love a 4e video game in the style of FFT, Tactics Ogre, etc.

You know, today is the first day that it even occurred to me that "Tactics Ogre" is not referring to a version of this game.

[Swordslinger]

When I've played defenders I've used forced movement all the time, even if only to round monsters up or to keep them under control. I've used it to push monsters away so that I can move to a more advantageous position without taking opportunity attacks.

I've also used it to push dazed or prone monsters into positions where they're unable to make an attack or to break grabs on allies. I've even used it at times to move immobilized allies into a position where they won't be forced to waste their turns.

Yeah pretty much. Forced movement is useful in a lot of little scenarios, including situations where you have enemies with some kind of death triggered power, like an explosion on death or a final attack.

The thing I think most people forget is that 4E is supposed to be a small scale tactical combat. It's not a crazy over the top superhero battle.

Push is one of those situational effects that you want in your bag of tricks, but it's not a full blown character gimmick and it quite often needs to combine with other stuff to make it strong, which is pretty much okay, since most of 4E's powers do damage + a status effect. So having it where pushing someone can make a daze or immobilization a stronger effect encourages some teamwork.

[Krakatoa]

I actually love Come and Get It. I mean you can complain about how it forces enemies to make stupid tactical decisions, but they do get a Will defense against it.

[ModelCitizen]

Come and Get It is stupid for a lot of reasons, but what makes it infamously stupid is that it didn't used to work like that. The rules you're talking about are from errata this fall. The PHB version is pull automatically, then attack vs AC. Even if you cared about the italic fluff line it doesn't make it clear what's supposed to be happening:

You call your opponents toward you and deliver a blow they will never forget.

Some people interpreted that as a taunt, some said the targets just happened to be where you wanted them to be, whatever. But apparently it was enough dissociation to make even the 4e crowd notice.

[Krakatoa]

Right, but there's nothing wrong with a dissociated mechanic, as much as blowhards like The Alexandrian protest otherwise. Fantasy RPGs are built on heaps of them (HP, spells per day, ...rolling dice)

The change came not because it was dissociated but because forced movement with no defense or possibility of mitigation was considered overpowered even if you missed with the attack.

[ModelCitizen]

Then they would have changed the attack to +2 vs AC or something, not Will.

About dissociation in general, a game has a certain dissociation "budget" before players get tired of trying to meet the game halfway. The more often you have to do mental gymnastics to rationalize the rules, the more likely you are to give up and stop caring about the game world. The problem isn't that a game can never have a dissociated mechanic (see hit points), it's that 4e vastly exceeded its budget.

[Previn]

Right, but there's nothing wrong with a dissociated mechanic, as much as blowhards like The Alexandrian protest otherwise. Fantasy RPGs are built on heaps of them (HP, spells per day, ...rolling dice)

The change came not because it was dissociated but because forced movement with no defense or possibility of mitigation was considered overpowered even if you missed with the attack.

Yes, there is something wrong with a dissociated mechanic when it breaks the flow of the game, or your immersion in it. Where you draw that line is going to vary from person to person, but clearly it's a significant enough phenomenon that the phrase is relatively common, especially when discussing 4e.

Incidentally I have yet to find a satisfactory answer to how one describes Bloody Path used on a beholder.

[Seerow]

Now that I think about it, that facebook Heroes of Neverwinter game uses a very pared down version of the 4E ruleset. I haven't really played enough of it to know if it's worth the time sink and selling your information though. (I'm guessing no.)

I tried it. I can tell you it's not worth it. They messed up the wealth system even worse than default 4e (you have to pay gold to get party members to come with you, past level 2 or 3, you almost always spend more gold recruiting party members for a dungeon than you actually get in loot), the powers are as you noted stripped down even more than the base game, and the whole thing is really laggy and buggy, probably at least partially due to being flash based.

On the push-pull thing, I suspect it depends on how creative the DM is with terrain. If you're fighting on a featureless plain it probably doesn't matter much. If you're fighting on the wandering planets in the elemental chaos that Gabe of Penny Arcade set up it matters a lot.

Really just having some difficult terrain, unpassable spaces (columns etc), etc makes it good enough to be tactically relevant. Also combining it with other status conditions as someone else noted is generally pretty good (knocking somebody back while slowed can basically kill their whole turn, and slow is a really common and easy to apply status effect). You don't need crazy terrain, just something other than the featureless terrain and people using it intelligently with other class features.

Come and Get It is infamously stupid, but it doesn't seem hard to justify sliding or dragging an enemy in melee. Is the problem that martial pulling/sliding is inherently dissociated, or is it that the 4e writers just didn't take the time to make them make sense?

Yeah, sliding an enemy closer to you or to the other side of you is fine. Things like come and get it where you pull an enemy closer to you from outside your reach are more along the lines of what I was saying was stupid. Yes, I can see some arguments for it, but none that I'd really buy into, and I'm somebody who thinks that marks are a good mechanic and likes healing surges.

You know, today is the first day that it even occurred to me that "Tactics Ogre" is not referring to a version of this game.

Wow. Just wow.

[Krakatoa]

Then they would have changed the attack to +2 vs AC or something, not Will.

About dissociation in general, a game has a certain dissociation "budget" before players get tired of trying to meet the game halfway. The more often you have to do mental gymnastics to rationalize the rules, the more likely you are to give up and stop caring about the game world. The problem isn't that a game can never have a dissociated mechanic (see hit points), it's that 4e vastly exceeded its budget.

But how does one measure something like that? I don't feel that 4E is any more dissociated than 3rd edition. If anything, it's less: since wizards, for example, have such an ungodly power progression compared to weak classes like the bard and monk, the fictive landscape makes little sense. Wizards could nuke anything with a relativistic coin drop or Planeshift something into the elemental chaos against its will. The Greyhawk setting was constructed with no thought to how power like that would shape the world (mostly because Greyhawk came from earlier, less broken editions.)

You find 'Come and Get It' to be crazily dissociated. To me it seems pretty obvious: you taunt your enemy, pretend to drop your guard, make him want to take a stab at you, and then clobber him when he gets close. Why does it work against guys with ranged attacks? Well they can make stupid decisions too. Why does it work against Beholders? Even they aren't infallible tacticians.

Yes, there is something wrong with a dissociated mechanic when it breaks the flow of the game, or your immersion in it. Where you draw that line is going to vary from person to person, but clearly it's a significant enough phenomenon that the phrase is relatively common, especially when discussing 4e.

Right, I get that to a degree, but playability and fun are fundamentally more important to immersion than everything "making sense". Just look at say, Red Steel on the Wii. Sure, wagging the Wiimote is more "immersive" in terms of your actions translating to what happens on screen, but since it's fiddly and the game is otherwise boring, you don't get immersed. Meanwhile, Batman: Arkham City is completely engrossing even though pressing the X button is nothing like throwing an actual punch.

[ModelCitizen]

But but but 3e wizards!

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[Dog Quixote]

You find 'Come and Get It' to be crazily dissociated. To me it seems pretty obvious: you taunt your enemy, pretend to drop your guard, make him want to take a stab at you, and then clobber him when he gets close. Why does it work against guys with ranged attacks? Well they can make stupid decisions too. Why does it work against Beholders? Even they aren't infallible tacticians.

It doesn't work that way. That is one way that you can choose to justify it in some of the situations in which it can be applied. I refuse to believe however that you can taunt anyone to jump from a raised position and fall to the ground where they both take injury and fall prone, before continuing to crawl toward you on their belly. We encountered this problem pretty early in 4E's run.

[Username17]

Spells per day is not a dissociated mechanic. Wizards spend several minutes preparing a spell and then a couple seconds unleashing it upon the world. That is how it works. Characters can interact with prepared spells and have actual empty slots that they can prepare spells into. Spell thieves can go look at and destroy prepared spells. When a wizard casts a spell, it is literally "cast" in the same way that a net is cast or a fishing line is cast - meaning something that has already been specially prepared is then thrown out in order to have its desired effect.

Spells per day may be weird, but it's definitely how the world actually works. Characters in that world can tell you about spell slots and count them and make predictions about what can be done based on how many there are. It's basically the complete opposite of a dissociated mechanic.

-Username17

[Krakatoa]

Despite constantly leveling stupid criticisms against the game I don't like, I can't be bother to acknowledge criticisms of one I do.

It doesn't work that way. That is one way that you can choose to justify it in some of the situations in which it can be applied. I refuse to believe however that you can taunt anyone to jump from a raised position and fall to the ground where they both take injury and fall prone, before continuing to crawl toward you on their belly. We encountered this problem pretty early in 4E's run.

Effect: You pull each target 2 squares to a space adjacent
to you. You cannot pull a target that cannot end adjacent
to you. You then make a close attack targeting each
adjacent enemy.

That's covered.

Spells per day is not a dissociated mechanic. Wizards spend several minutes preparing a spell and then a couple seconds unleashing it upon the world. That is how it works. Characters can interact with prepared spells and have actual empty slots that they can prepare spells into. Spell thieves can go look at and destroy prepared spells. When a wizard casts a spell, it is literally "cast" in the same way that a net is cast or a fishing line is cast - meaning something that has already been specially prepared is then thrown out in order to have its desired effect.

Spells per day may be weird, but it's definitely how the world actually works. Characters in that world can tell you about spell slots and count them and make predictions about what can be done based on how many there are. It's basically the complete opposite of a dissociated mechanic.

-Username17

Okay, that's a valid point, but it's also an exception that proves the rule. The game rules exist to mediate play and that should always be primary. The game and the fiction inform each other, but neither should be a slave to the other. Expecting that to be the case leads to utterly derivative crap. Like, someone plays Silent Hill and just adds that straight into his game. In a game that expects the protagonists to be heroes with powers and stuff. Suddenly, the players have restrictions that only make sense in the context of the original fiction and the direct copy.

The same thing happens with a lot of D&D mechanics. They came from the fiction that Arneson and Gygax read, but were incorporated without a lot of thought as to how they'd play in a game.

[Dog Quixote]

Effect: You pull each target 2 squares to a space adjacent
to you. You cannot pull a target that cannot end adjacent
to you. You then make a close attack targeting each
adjacent enemy.

That's covered.

The problem outlined in my example specifically specifically arises from the result of trying to explain forced movement (according to the rules) as willing movement.

And my example specifically arises from the the fact the target does end it's move adjacent. Falling does not end forced movement unless the target succeeds on a saving throw. Prone does not affect forced movement at all.

Did you read the post?

[Swordslinger]

Yes, there is something wrong with a dissociated mechanic when it breaks the flow of the game, or your immersion in it. Where you draw that line is going to vary from person to person, but clearly it's a significant enough phenomenon that the phrase is relatively common, especially when discussing 4e.

Incidentally I have yet to find a satisfactory answer to how one describes Bloody Path used on a beholder.

I don't find it all that dissociative. You taunt an enemy and he comes rushing at you, heedless of danger that happens to be in your way.

You may consider the power's flavor to be stupid, unrealistic or even verisimilitude breaking, but it's really not operating on a solely metagame level the way dissociative stuff does. But I figure if I can live with a bard playing a lute in the middle of melee, I can live with Come and Get it. Because dude, bards are pretty stupid in general.

[ModelCitizen]

You may consider the power's flavor to be stupid, unrealistic or even verisimilitude breaking, but it's really not operating on a solely metagame level the way dissociative stuff does. But I figure if I can live with a bard playing a lute in the middle of melee, I can live with Come and Get it. Because dude, bards are pretty stupid in general.

Yeah, I've never been happy about that one either. Even if you can accept that your song is from Short Music for Short People and can be played in a few rounds, you are still playing a fucking lute in combat.

That's a job for your sidekick. Your comic relief sidekick. The one your party members snicker at and make Batman and Robin jokes behind your back.

[hogarth]

[X] is not a dissociated mechanic. [...] That is how it works.

Of course, you could literally say that about everything.

What happens when a 3E wizard tries to cast a spell when he's out of spell slots? It doesn't work because it doesn't work that way.

What happens when a 4E fighter tries to use a daily power when he's out of daily powers? It doesn't work because it doesn't work that way.

Talking about "dissociated mechanics" is mostly just code for saying "needs better fluff".

[Username17]

[X] is not a dissociated mechanic. [...] That is how it works.

Of course, you could literally say that about everything.

What happens when a 3E wizard tries to cast a spell when he's out of spell slots? It doesn't work because it doesn't work that way.

What happens when a 4E fighter tries to use a daily power when he's out of daily powers? It doesn't work because it doesn't work that way.

Talking about "dissociated mechanics" is mostly just code for saying "needs better fluff".

Well, it means that it needs to be set up in a way that it does not contradict the fluff. Wizard prepared spells are associated because there is an actual thing that has been prepared that is gone when it is used. You can't use it again because there isn't one left. There is no corner case where you should be able to use it in the fluff but the mechanics say you can't because the fluff explanation covers all cases in the game.

4e Fighter powers claim that you have a limited number of openings or that you get tired or something. Which is superficially fine, but what happens when you haven't used it and you get hit by a giant fatigue effect that makes you barely able to walk? Why can you still use it? Or what happens when your enemy is totally helpless but you've already used it up, why can't you find an opening on a dude who is literally lying there?

Yeah, you could put in some new fluff that covered all corner cases, but I have no idea what that fluff might be and neither does anyone else because in nearly three and a half years not one person has come up with a satisfactory answer that covers both extreme fatigue on the part of the fighter and total helplessness on the part of the fighter's target.

-Username17