D&D 5E New L&L for 22/1/13 D&D Next goals, part 3

[Libramarian]

But as my heated response to you signalled, I'm pretty fed up with this idea that somehow 4e is a fictional-positioning-free game. I'm prepared to believe, based on the evidence of these boards, that some people play(ed) it that way, but I don't know why they did. The rulebooks never say anything about that.

I think because there are two different kinds of "stunting" -- stunting because you think it would be cool and fits the story, and stunting for significant advantage. 4e pg. 42 is great for the first kind, because it ensures that the DM will give you a minimum level of damage (comparable with an at-will of that level), but unsatisying for the second kind, because it ensures that the DM will give you a maximum level of damage (comparable with a daily of that level).

For people who think of stunting in the "barter for significant advantage" way, there's "no point" to stunting in 4e, so they don't do it. Necessity is the mother of invention for many challenge-oriented players. I can totally see how pg 42 would never come up in many 4e groups.

 

[I'm A Banana]

Not to mention the fact that 4e is so chock full of powers, even for a 1st-level character, that there's always easier things to do in combat than a stunt. If your options in getting through the fight are to push this button or to try and convince the DM to roll on a table for you, pushing the button is going to be the route most people take.

 

[Hussar]

However, let's be fair here. I've seen most players never try anything other than what's on their character sheet in any edition. The whole, "Let's swing across the room by a chandelier" isn't something that comes up all that much IME, simply because it's almost always a worse option than simply sticking your sword in something. Very few times does stunting result in any significant advantage, again, IME, and most of the time it's a waste of time.

For example, in the How Well Can You Make Your Favourite Character thread, people were talking about how they couldn't do what a Warlord does in other editions. The counter was that you can always stunt actions. That's true to an extent.

But, how many DM's have you ever met who would let a player do this:

Player: I'm going to hit the bad guy, shoving him into Bob's character and Bob is going to get a free swing at the bad guy.

Anyone? Would you allow this to happen in any edition other than 4e? I know I wouldn't. Attack, push AND a free attack? Not a chance. Yet, this isn't even a stunt in 4e, it's a standard power. Part of the reason you don't see a lot of stunting in 4e, although I have seen some (mostly pushing people off of things and possibly peeing on them ) is that the straight up things your character can do cover a pretty darn broad number of interesting things to do right out of the box.

I dunno. I guess it boils down to what you consider to be a significant advantage. Daily level damage on something is pretty decent. But, no, you're not going to be able to blind something permanently.

 

[pemerton]

rituals still have casting time to bind them somewhat so that skills can remain significant for emergencies

I don't find rituals crowd out skills - at least, not yet. But they give some functionality that skills tend not to (eg Phantom Steeds).

Rituals often give other characters power... like the "affect normal fires" lets the entire party manipulate fire and breath water works similarly.

This is true.

 

[pemerton]

I think because there are two different kinds of "stunting" -- stunting because you think it would be cool and fits the story, and stunting for significant advantage. 4e pg. 42 is great for the first kind, because it ensures that the DM will give you a minimum level of damage (comparable with an at-will of that level), but unsatisying for the second kind, because it ensures that the DM will give you a maximum level of damage (comparable with a daily of that level).

It's true that stunting in 4e is not going to be like Transmute Rock to Mud used to smother all your enemies with the roof of a cavern.

But I think you're underestimating the tactical/mechanical oomph of p 42: getting daily-level effects without spending a daily, or just effects that you can't easily get from your own power set, is not insignificant.

 

[Manbearcat]

It's true that stunting in 4e is not going to be like Transmute Rock to Mud used to smother all your enemies with the roof of a cavern.

But I think you're underestimating the tactical/mechanical oomph of p 42: getting daily-level effects without spending a daily, or just effects that you can't easily get from your own power set, is not insignificant.

That last part cannot be stressed enough. When you don't have a movement impairing effect (prone, slowed, or even immobilized) amongst your list of deployable resources and there is a large chandelier that you can interact with (off the cuff) and do a limited use, low damage expression, burst 2, prone with difficult terrain in the area until the end of the encounter; well that control (even with negligible damage) can turn an encounter going south into a win for the good guys. You may have turned 2-5 brutes/skirmishers/soldiers into little more than pin-cushions for an entire round of combat; which is a lot less damage-in for the good guys and a huge net win in the action economy game.

Hitting things until they're dead is a good dial for people who want solely that (or for handling "quick and dirty" combats). However, that dial has to be tunable such that martial characters are able to functionally, explicitly be players in the control/action economy game in 5e.

 

[Libramarian]

I agree that this is what I want. Golden age Sword and Sorcery is a blast. The problem is, that is pretty orthagonal to the idea of "let's look up the weight limits of our stuff!", everyone is referencing books to find new spells to use, style of play. " At least to me.

You never see this sort of tactical planning in sword and sorcery fiction. You see this sort of thing more in Police Procedurals and that genre, where part of the draw of that genre is what I've heard called "Science Porn". You've seen it if you've watched something like CSI. The police have a bunch of clues to test out. The music starts (boom chicka bow wow) and we get a montage of guys and girls in lab coats staring intensely at beakers and machines.

You get roughly the same sort of scene in the old A-Team and 80's action genre TV shows where the A-Team would be faced with some sort of challenge and you'd get a montage of the team preparing for whatever it was they were going to face.

And there's nothing wrong with that. It's fun and, let's be honest, it's certainly popular.

But, what it's not is Sword and Sorcery genre. You never see Conan coming up with lengthy methodical plans for dealing with stuff. You never see Elric pouring over maps, selecting just the right spell and the right equipment. You never see Croaker (Black Company) spending all sorts of time in the planning stages of anything. It's nearly always, bare bones plan, initiate and react. Very high paced, very exciting.

What you never see, which I've certainly seen more than a few times in "let's look up the weight limits of our stuff!", everyone is referencing books to find new spells to use, style of play" is the group spending three hours trying to figure out the exact wording of the questions to use in a Commune spell.

Heh, science porn. It's interesting, I wonder if that's really as out of place with the S&S genre as you're saying. I've seen [MENTION=463]S'mon[/MENTION] desribe S&S as modernist but I'm not really sure what that means.

I can think of a few scenes in Conan and Elric that feel like planning or resource management...Elric debating with the various dukes and kings of the Young Kingdoms about how to coordinate their response to the chaos army in Stormbringer, Conan selecting which of the woodsmen to take as henchmen in Beyond the Black River. Turjan selecting just the right spells to force into his brain before retiring to his couch in Vance's Dying Earth (I haven't read the Black Company).

This image (back of the 1e phb) has an S&S vibe to me, does it not for you?

 

[triqui]

I find it curious that 4e gets the blame of all things it did, and some things that were done in 3rd edition too. Like the homogeneous XP chart.

 

[Hussar]

/snip

This image (back of the 1e phb) has an S&S vibe to me, does it not for you?

Well, it's perhaps a whole lot magic heavy, but, heh. The thing is, this isn't planning, it's dividing up the spoils. The party has returned from the dungeon with the loot and now it's time to split things up, even down to the elf rolling dice - presumably highest roll gets first pick. I know we played that way for a very long time in AD&D when you wound up with piles of loot that everyone could use.

I don't see it very much in 3e or 4e because both systems tend to hand out far fewer magic items. I mean, in just that picture, you've got 5 magic items to split between 4 PC's. When's the last time your group hauled five new magic items at one time? Other than maybe potions or scrolls, I can't remember the last time I saw more than a couple of magic items in an entire adventure. Other than in the double digit level stuff.

Anyway, I'm going off on a tangent here.

The point is, the whole "Let's plan the heck out of stuff, down to counting ounces" isn't something you see in S&S fiction. Not that they never plan. That's not what I mean. Just that you don't see extended planning sessions like you typically see in the "'let's look up the weight limits of our stuff!', everyone is referencing books to find new spells to use, style of play".

Granted, I LIKE that style of play. It makes my inner wargamer sit up and start to drool. But, it's pretty far removed from the inspirational fiction.

 

[Libramarian]

The point is, the whole "Let's plan the heck out of stuff, down to counting ounces" isn't something you see in S&S fiction. Not that they never plan. That's not what I mean. Just that you don't see extended planning sessions like you typically see in the "'let's look up the weight limits of our stuff!', everyone is referencing books to find new spells to use, style of play".

Granted, I LIKE that style of play. It makes my inner wargamer sit up and start to drool. But, it's pretty far removed from the inspirational fiction.

You don't see that much of it in the fiction, but it doesn't feel that far removed from it to me. It feels like it would occur just "off-screen", so it's not a big deal in terms of genre violation to bring it center-stage for a while in-game. I see the S&S hero as someone who needs to plan, as opposed to a sort of mythological hero who can just fight and react because he's one with the wilderness. The S&S hero is more relatable than that...he's a forester, not of the forest. He's a cowboy, not an Indian, to put it in a sort of appropriately racist way. Does that make sense? Maybe we don't disagree and what you have in mind is something to which I would say yeah, definitely that's boring and the game shouldn't spend much time on it, I just thought it was an interesting point to make about the S&S genre.